Originally Posted by
UKtravelbear
The paid for premier card is no longer offered by IHG in the UK. So once you give up the card you won’t get it back (unless they start to re offer it but there is no guarantee of that or that they would accept you for it on reapplication)
You only have Plat whilst you hold the card - as per this article in head for a points about the card being withdrawn to new applicants and this sort of detail isn’t something they get wrong -
https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/0...d-credit-card/ - so unless your qualifying spend / nights earned you Plat in its own right you’d drop down to at least Gold.
So that’s something to factor into your thinking and not just for this year but next year when you start to travel again.
Ah, now, thanks for this. This is quite relevant. Once I drop down there's no going back.
Originally Posted by
UKtravelbear
You mention you also collect / earn free nights for hotels . com which I presume you use for non IHG and non Hilton stays, I don’t know when their rewards expire or what sort of Covid extension they have offered so perhaps a strategy is to drop them for this travel light year and pick them up again next year - but only after checking their rewards expiry policy.
You could then concentrate at the moment in using your paid for stays to maintain Hilton and tell yourself that the £99 IHG is a sunk cost this year but you’ll reap the benefits in future years by not dropping it.
Strategy has always been IHG as I find their coverage better for where I want to be, then Hilton, and then Hotels.com usually overseas, or when I need to be in a specific location and I'm without a car, or when I can't get one of the other two. I'm a leisure traveller only, but my two main leisure activities of going to gigs and running marathons take me away at weekends, and then a few times a year I like to take the family somewhere nice with a pool.
For the rather different travel pattern that I have this year, which will be mainly visiting family without staying with them overnight, the conveniently located hotels are Hilton, and I'm happy as a result to make a couple of extra bookings where I would normally go IHG. I've got to use my Hotels.com reward night by the end of this year, but I have a use for that in December.
The reason I originally got the paid for IHG card was to get a Hilton status match in NYC at a busy time, and I more than made up for the cost of the card just with the free breakfast. That purpose is no longer there, but I do normally manage to make up at least the cost of the card each year in benefits.
Originally Posted by
UKtravelbear
As to the Curve and it’s ilk it’s not something I have much truck for. There are endless daily comments on head for points about these card fronts not always working. Have a read of the HfP daily chat threads for a week and you’ll get an idea of the issues people are having just to earn a few extra points.
I was an early adopter, but I've never really understood manufactured spend, and to be fair it's mainly used to allow me to use my Virgin Atlantic card on Google Pay and to use all my cards contactlessly with my watch.