Beating ihg official rates is pretty easy ime for those that have time on their hands. It might not be ctrip that comes through in the end, but there is always some agency that can undercut ihg's own channel. Feel free to test me on this.

Switching sub topics, I want to tell you guys about a recent ctrip experience that went awry:
-colleague and self booked tickets from sha to nng for 1/4 two days ago, separately but at the same time
-both of us received the "your order is in process, and we'll confirm within 24 hours" confirmation
-no confirmations of any sort showed up (apart from them charging our credit cards)
-so we called the next day and learned that my ticket was fine, but that he was flying a day earlier and needed to cough up 900 in order to change to the desired date
-they blamed the lack of confirmation notifications on the fact that we gave them gmail addresses (faulty logic because they can send email to whoever they please and they also have our cell phone numbers)

In the end, they let my colleague get by with a change fee of only 200, but were unwilling to admit responsibility for the communication snafu.

I bought another ticket from them this morning, and received notification from them via both email and SMS.