Originally Posted by
Lefly
What I'm unclear about is: are we talking of getting lounge access every year only after 40 nights done after status year start (so no lounge access until that), or we are talking to get lounge access the whole next status year once reached 40 nights the previous year?
The way IHG does it is that after 40 nights in a year, you can choose to have lounge access for the rest of that year and all of the next year. (Or if you choose a different reward at 40 nights, you can choose lounge after 70 nights.)
So if you do 40 nights every year you will always be able to have lounge access after the first year.
IHG had a loophole where if your 40th night was in October 2023 or later, you could choose to not have lounge access for the rest of 2023, but have it for all of 2024 and 2025. They have now changed it so that if the rules had applied in 2023, you'd only have had lounge access for all of 2023 and 2024.