Originally Posted by
christianj
Promotions are better BUT good hotels also require more points and really nice hotels are far and few IMHO.
IHG used to be my main secondary chain. While even today, they provide very limited elite benefits, they used to have very good redemption prices to go along with their better promotions.
But over the last 10 years or so, they've pulled in the reins on some of the promotion opportunities while at the same time sky-rocketing a lot of the hotel redemption prices.
I used to be able to get oceanfront hotels for 15K/night then over a few year basis those prices went up to 45K/night. For me, now, IHG redemptions cost a whole lot more than they used to, I can't take advantage of as many bonus promotions as I used to and they still don't provide hardly any elite benefits. This is why I dropped from Spire to Plat this year. I moved my secondary program to SPG (with Marriott being my primary).