Originally Posted by
scubaccr
No you can't. IHG updated their t+c's some months ago, and under expiring section (point 24) specifically addressed this "book+cancel awards fiddle" and will no doubt not make any difference if you do cancel immediately or after weeks/month if you book award 1year out.
https://www.ihg.com/content/gb/en/cu...member-tc.html
24. Point Expiration. CLUB LEVEL MEMBERSHIP POINTS (SEE MEMBER BENEFITS, INCLUDING LEVELS OF MEMBERSHIP,
HERE) WILL EXPIRE IF YOUR MEMBERSHIP ACCOUNT BECOMES INACTIVE FOR ANY PERIOD OF TWELVE (12) MONTHS OR LONGER, WHICH MEANS YOUR POINTS WILL BE REMOVED FROM YOUR ACCOUNT AND WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE FOR REDEMPTION. To maintain the Points in your membership account, you must have at least one “earn” or “redeem” transaction posted to your account every twelve (12) months. Use of the one night per year provided to IHG Rewards Club credit card holders does not constitute an “earn” or “redeem” activity to prevent Point expiration.
If you redeem Points for a Stay and subsequently cancel that Stay, the redemption activity does not prevent Point expiration. Points do not expire for current Elite Members, although Points may expire twelve (12) months after an Elite Member’s account moves to Club level if there is no “earn” or “redeem” activity during those twelve (12) months.
My only surprise at this is that it took them so long to do.
I remember back when the first lot of points removals were due to take place and someone was rather vocally advocating this as the way to go.
I recommended purchasing an ebook (some were available at the time for as little as 100 points) and was accused of recommending people waste points on nonsense. My theory was play the game properly, if you physically make a redemption and actually spend some points they can’t argue with that.
They couldn’t grasp that cancelling the reward stay was a “reversal” of the redemption which meant in theory there had been no redemption as the points were returned.