Hi Everyone -
I hope that you enjoyed ringing in the New Year! I wanted to chime in and provide some more clarity for the changes that were just made to the Reward Night structure. We've updated the structure to a "category" format similar to other hotel loyalty programs, which will allow us to better match the value of the Reward Night with the point cost.
-Carolyn
Below is a letter written to you all from John Muehlbauer, Director of Priority Club Rewards regarding these changes:
Hello members,
I wanted to send a personal note to let you be among the first to know that we are making a change to Reward Nights soon. As we’re announcing to all of our members today, on January 18th, Priority Club will introduce a new Reward Night chart and changes to the points required for a Reward Night at some of our hotels.
The new Reward Night chart is located on the Priority Club Rewards
website. You can see that we’ve introduced Reward Night categories that stretch across our IHG brand family and that we’ve retired our brand-specific chart. We believe that categories will allow us to better match Reward Night value to the points required.
As you can imagine, this new chart will mean some hotels will be changing the number of points required for a Reward Night. Less than 30% of our hotels will be increasing with this change. But this also means that we can lower the points required at some hotels; more hotels, in fact, than we’ll be increasing. Not only will we be lowering points required at more than 30% of our hotels, we will now have more than 500 properties available at our lowest category – 10,000 points.
If you have a current Reward Night reservation we will not be changing the points required and any new Reward Night reservations you book before January 18th will be at the current price point. And, because we want this change to be as easy as possible, we’re honoring the old points required for any new Reward Night reservations made through March 18th. Our Priority Club Rewards Service Center agents are trained to help; just call and ask for the old price.
We’re working to make Rewards simpler and easier to understand. By more closely reflecting the value of the night - you’ll see Reward Night pricing reflect location, brand, amenities, demand, etc. just like paid rates - we think it'll be easier for you, our member, to plan and book your Reward Nights. And we are keeping what makes us an award-winning program: no blackout dates, no point expiration, no “seasonal surcharges”, access to over 4,500 hotels through our portfolio of world-class brands, and a wide array of Reward options including Reward Nights, Brand-name merchandise, or redeem for flights, hotels, and cars with our Anywhere Rewards.
Carolyn will be monitoring this thread and will help answer any questions you may have regarding this change.
Regards,
John Muehlbauer
Director, Priority Club Rewards