agb1a

If I redeem points for gift cards on the IHG website . Can only I use them ? Can I give them to family to use ?

Willinahotel

In the UK they send you gift cards from the shop you requested. This means that anyone can use them, as they are the same as those available in the shop.

Raffles

UK cards are on sale fairly often, drop from 15,000 to 12,500 for £25. Hold off if not desperate.

skibum7732

that is one of the worst things you could possibly do with your IHG points

Mauibaby2008

^^ +1

Do not do this

One time I knew a girl that won 100,000 IHG points. Redeemed them all for gift cards. Horrible!

Raffles

But here's the thing - it isn't.

It is pretty poor but it isn't terrible. It isn't like exchanging 100,000 airline miles for a toaster when you could have got a first class flight across the Atlantic instead.

I value IHG points at 0.5p based on IC redemptions. This is obviously toppy as I can buy them for $7 per 1000 which is currently 0.41p.

At 12,500 points for a £25 gift voucher, you are getting 0.2p per point. So it is only half as good as redeeming for a hotel room.

However .... if you use your points for vouchers and then PAY for your IHG stay instead of using a redemption, you will earn more points back. Depending on the current bonus codes, quite a lot of points back. The gap is therefore narrower than you think.

You are also locking in the value of your points now, rather than sitting on them and risking an IHG devaluation.

tangey

You generally get best value from Hotel/airline points (other than small balances) by redeeming back with the same company you got them with.

You need 15K points to get £25 gift voucher (not 12.5K). thats 0.167p per point. Be hard pressed to find a worse redemption.
So for example, 50K points is worth £83.33 in vouchers.

In london, that 50K will get you a room at either IC. For 3 random dates I tried, the 50K night rooms in cash range between £240 and £320.

That is likely probably one of the better redemptions, but still, easy enough to get x2.5 compared with cash-out to vouchers.

That really only stands true if you are triggering many of the one-off bonuses, once you've done the first such stay in a bonus quarter, the next ones will trigger many less bonuses. And for that first redemption in the quarter, he, like everyone else, should be looking to book the cheapest cash IHG room possible, and add the cheaply earned points to his total, making his overall balance more useful.

Even going by your own figures, the points would have to devalue by 50% for it to be good advice, which isn't a realistic expectation within the next 12 months. So unless the OP has zero opportunity to redeemed in the next 18 months, his best option is by far IHG bookings.

Clearly that advice changes if there is a desperate need to cash out. No point in going hungry just to keep an IHG balance, for example.

Raffles

It is all relative, though. You have to be certain you can use them for something better before any devaluation bites you. I would not do this myself, but I would accept the argument of someone who did it. (Anyone who told me they redeemed 100,000 Miles & More miles for a toaster, on the other hand, would get a slap.)

If, for example, someone wants to offer me - say - 0.8p in cash for my entire SPG stash (assuming I would get 1.5p for a hotel redemption) then I would take it, because at the moment I do not see any opportunity to use those for stays based on my travel pattern. I am 99 per cent certain to use 100,000 for a Wimbledon package this year for example, because it allows me to offload. I redeem for so many SPG Moments events I fully expect an invite to the staff Christmas party.

Devaluation-wise, it is clear that the 50k IC award (the only redemption I do) is for the bin. Hilton is now asking 80,000 and up for such rooms, and charging 50k for IC Park Lane and 35k for the HIX in Limehouse is not sustainable.

The gift vouchers are at 12,500 points for a few months every year so that is a fair baseline valuation.

This is also, of course, a good way of dumping points if you are running multiple accounts. As long as the one off bonus points get you 15,000 in one stay for the first stay on a new account, you could open a new account per stay and instantly cash out for £25 of vouchers before IHG came along to close you down!

tangey

But you are talking about something that on your horizon, has no value for you in its current form, you have so many SPG points, you won't use them for hotel redemptions.

I don't know anyone that would ever argue that converting something that has zero value into something that has some value, is a bad thing.

If the OP sees his points as having zero value in their current form, then certainly do something else with them. If he sees them as having a hotel redemption value, but just not in the immediate future, then they will still have more value than converting to gift cards, even if IHG doubles top end redemptions to 100K, which is far far from likely.

And in his specific question, he was asking to convert to gift cards. One assumes he isn't going to wait for a possible offer at some indefinite time in the future of 12.5K per £25, if he is just looking to dispose of them, which means he'll get 0.167p per point.

Willinahotel

I think that before people start saying 'using points for gift cards is wrong/terrible etc' they need to realise that not everyone gives the same value to points as they do.

Yes, points do have a defined cash value (based on buying them or a hotel night or what have you) but in my case they have a value based upon what I require.

I spend 100 plus nights minimum in hotels a year with work and they are all paid for. The times we (as a family) have stayed in hotels, we have used points.
The only time I would have paid is if the room cost less than £25/night (the value of a giftcard)
I have used plenty of giftcards from IHG and they have helped considerably at Birthdays and Christmas to purchase presents. This is worth much more to me than a night in a London IC that I'm not going to be staying in. If my plans do change and I would be staying in a London IC, I would use the points in that way.

The points are a by product of being away from home a lot and help make for Christmas/Birthday presents and weekends trips that have a greatly reduced financial impact than would otherwise be the case.

I know for sure that that if I had to pay for all my hotel stays, I would analyse points cost vs. future stays to minimise the cost, but at the moment they just help make life a little better for a little less.

tangey

As I said earlier.
"I don't know anyone that would ever argue that converting something that has zero value into something that has some value, is a bad thing."

You appear to be in a similar position to raffles, more points in a hotel group than you ever see yourself likely to use. To you they have little value as hotel points, makes sense to convert them into something that has SOME value to you.

Raffles

Which is where we came in!

They have some value as gift cards, and that value is close enough to the value you'd get from a hotel redemption (if you don't have one planned) to make it acceptable.

Even if someone had just been given a 20 year prison sentence, though, I still wouldn't recommend redeeming 100,000 Miles & More miles for a toaster. (Although they would need to get the credit card to stop their miles expiring!).

skibum7732

I consider it absolutely horrendous myself, but to each their own. I typicaly get at least $.01 value out of mine and sometimes much more...last week we went to a comedy club and spent one night at an IHG property...5000 points for a $133 hotel room $.026/point.

holtju2

I burned about million points when they had the Any Hotel Anywhere cards (USD) on sale for those in Australia. You got 0.8 cents per 1 point. I doubt that they would ever return at this level though.

LiviLion

Back when I was doing in the region of 150 to 200 IHG stays a year I was earning points like mad. I cashed out quite a few for gift vouchers to get a PSP and a PS3 from Argos.

As I don't travel so much these days thankfully I use my points for stays typically.