Wow, when did IHG's cancellation policy change across the board? I always read the policy carefully, and noticed that recent bookings required earlier cancellations than before, but I thought that was just at those particular hotels (where I had not previously stayed). After reading this thread, I checked several hotels--both where I had stayed and where I had not--and found that the policy had moved to 24 hours earlier than before! Did I miss a notice or at least a discussion of this somewhere?

Take note that one cannot depend on the policy being 6:00pm the day before the stay. That may be true of the majority of hotels, but some that I checked were 6:00pm two days before, and others were 4:00pm either the day before or two days before. Gotta read the fine print every time.