Jet d'Eau
It seems that for me, four is the magic number when it comes to hotel promotions operating under time pressure. Enough to not be a routine trip and thus activate my 'hmm, how can I best put this together?' curiosity; but not obviously infeasible. I started this year by
bouncing around California on a status challenge with Hilton; and now I end it chasing the 'big win' across Europe.
This is IHG's Fourth Quarter promotion, and it feels like they're actively courting the travel-hacker crowd with this one. Having signed up to the Rewards Club specifically to give it a shot, here's the challenge I was set:
- Survey the win: Complete a simple survey and receive 100 Points.
- Try one and done: Stay at any IHG® hotel and receive 1,000 Points.
- Book with us: Book 2 separate stays through an IHG hotel website or mobile device to get our best price guarantee and receive 2,000 Points.
- Stay more and earn more: Stay a total of 4 nights and receive 4,000 Points.
- Win in a weekend: Stay 2 Saturday nights and receive 8,000 Points.
- Explore our brands: Stay at 3 different IHG brands and receive 10,000 Points.
- Win big: Complete all of your offers and receive 25,000 Points.
A change of employment has somewhat curtailed my work-related travel; or at least, that of the kind that makes for flashy title-lines here. I'm still racking up plenty of flights and hotel stays, but it's more of the easyjet-and-ibis variety than Club class and Hiltons. Some of my existing plans could easily have a Holiday Inn Express stay worked into them, but to grab the lot – especially the three different brands requirement – would require going out of my way somewhat.
I initially considered it as a straight mattress run, pricing up the cheapest pre-Christmas Saturday night stays at my local Hotel Indigo and a nearby Holiday Inn. But I figured that it makes better sense to spend a bit more on a trip that I'd actually like to take, than to take an optimally-priced trip to nowhere. A milestone birthday helped swing me in the direction of an international component, as it'd help justify spending above what was strictly necessary for accommodation. Plus my ever-growing avios stash would let me keep the travel costs down and enjoy some of my status with BA.
Still, this remains an economy-class trip, and I had to keep an eye on the spending to make the big win worthwhile. But although there might be a general absence of caviar and champagne, I suspect this is the first trip report to feature a particle accelerator! I must apologise that it will be thin on photography initially - since I didn't originally plan for this to become a trip report. I hope my verbosity can make up for that, but I'm no
Seat2A... Still, for your entertainment, the travel gods continued to be fickle things, summoning all kinds of chaos from high winds to the dreaded leaves on the line - possibly still attached to trees - and so I deemed this project interesting enough to document.
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