Originally Posted by
Moniqua
Hello!
I am a *very* newbie traveler and have a very silly question for you.
My boyfriend and I are planning our FIRST EVER international trip to Europe and we were able to pay for most of our trip with reward points from the SPG Amex and Chase Sapphire. Earlier last month I opened an IHG rewards credit card to get the signup bonus and now that I've finally received those points, I was ready to book and discovered that the hotels we were eyeing in Dublin, Ireland have no reward nights available for the time we're staying in May!
We've booked pretty much everything in our trip. Dublin is our second to last stop on the trip. From there we fly to Paris and then fly back home and that flight from Dublin to Paris is already booked.
Does anyone have any advice on how we can use our 70k IHG points in Dublin if the online reservation system says there are no reward nights available? Can we call them and maybe talk our way into it?
Thanks in advanced!!
1. Before searching check your preferencs are not restricting the resuts, eg if preference is King Bed, you often do not see twin bedded rooms. Can apply to both award and paid nights
(ie untick all peference boxes)
2. Check each night of your stay separately. If just 1x night of searched multinight stay lacks availabilty, you get no award showing. Book the available nights as awards and buy paid rooms for missing nights
3. Check a week before stay again, hotls get a pittance for award nights unless occupancy exceeds 95%. If hotel is almost full > 95%, some release extra rooms to award pool then as ihg corporate pay almost same as a paid night. So in pt 2. above it can be worth booking missing nightsvon flex instead of advance rate to allow for possible rebbok night as award and cancel paid night