For those interested, I did the full math on my previous Big Win now: All in all I've spent $ 1,532 on the necessary stays to win. This gave me 106,266 points (of which 87,800 were my Big Win), no additional codes involved, only a few bonus points here and there. So the overall cpp was 1.44 dollar cents or $ 14.41 per thousand (I prefer doing it that way)
So for me the question "Was it worth it?" is actually a resounding YES.
PS because of a few factors, I've actually spent $ 4,463 in that same period with IHG altogether, so could have reached a lot higher goals actually (made me Platinum at least
- win-win for IHG and myself, but the overall CPT went up to nearly $ 32 because of that. (This includes some codes, but I've learnt them very late, unfortunately, so not too much of an impact. It also includes a stay at Staybridge Suites, I've only learnt later that they only give half the points....glad to have found this forum