If I understood the Friends and Family program correctly than (taken from Springwise's report about this):
It goes without saying that higher sales and staff motivation have always been good for business. Currently merging the two is InterContinental Hotels Group with its new ‘Friends and Family’ programme, turning 330,000 staff members into customers, advocates and media outlets.
It’s essentially a discount scheme for staff and their networks, which employees register for through IHG’s intranet. They then receive a link to their own personalized booking page, which they are encouraged to forward to friends and family and publish on their social network profile.
Anyone who makes a booking through the link before 31 May 2009 receives a 20%-50% discount on reservations made up to a year in advance.
So I tool the link provided by Astriker and got myself a nearly 45% discount in the IC Singapore which means I now have a Executive Suite for cheap price.
This is as much about IC filling rooms that otherwise would get unfilled as it's about me making a gain here. Both IC and I benefit.
Sure I'm a RA but if I get a 45% discount than I don't expect an upgrade to another room, points or even to be able to use a BOGO. It's called common sense.
I get a benefical rate via a social network site (flyertalk) because I'm part of Astrikers "friends", so thank you for sharing it.