Originally Posted by Retron

Being in the UK, and unable to avail myself of those lovely US card offers (silly levels of points per spend, massive bonuses, free nights / rebates and goodness only knows what else), I regard the points differently to most. I think of them as a free bonus and, in the case of the "buy points with stay" packages, as a way to get Diamond with far fewer nights / spend than would otherwise be required.

Promotions are non-existent for me over the past couple of years, other than the odd one everyone gets - nothing at the moment, for example. I have to say I really miss the old pre-Covid Accelerate promotions, they were actually great fun and more than once influenced choosing a HIX, for example, rather than a HI, and before that all the random ones which would pop up. If one does crop up I'll of course sign up for it - why wouldn't you, it's free points at best and at worst you've only wasted a few seconds.

The points have a minimum cash value of 0.1p in the UK, FWIW, and I always bear that in mind: 10000 points > 2000 Avios > £10 of Nectar points, which can be spent on pretty much anything, from groceries to furniture. There's also the option of exchanging them for gift cards, albeit the most useful one (Amazon) is no longer available... in fact, I can't even check current prices as the whole international IHG catalogue site seems to be down.

I've recently used points to book a number of redemptions (clearing out my stash of many years) and have been getting 0.46p per point of value, which isn't bad IMO. Is it as good as it used to be? Nope, but it's sure better than cashing out for Nectar points!