cruser1

Not sure this qualifies as a deal because it's so limited, but I'll post it here should somebody find it useful.

A room at the Holiday Inn: Hasselt in Belgium can be reserved for 13 EUR + tax or 5k IHG points on Dec 30 - 31. The night of Dec 23 - 24 is also available for 5k IHG points for the night and the usual 117 EUR.

Unfortunately the deal is extremely limited! The calendar for the rest of the year looks pretty normal.

HEOH

What graph did you use? Where from is it?

Lennys26v2

Yes, I am also very interested in how/where you generated the graph.

cruser1

Lennys26v2 and HEOH - Probably not what you want to hear, but the chart was generated with Splunk. I scrape hotel and flight data for some cities that I'm always interested in visiting and output / chart that data with HTML and a traditional JavaScript charting engine, but I also use Splunk for cities and flights that I'd like to watch for a while, but I'm not as interested in. I don't want to invest the time to hard-code something that would display the data, so I use Splunk.

I realize Splunk is usually for displaying server logs and machine generated data, but I use it at work for that and I'm used to seeing and using it, so I have my scraping scripts output into CSV format which free Splunk on my VPS then consumes. It makes it easy to add or remove stuff as my interests change! I just have to make sure my data never exceeds 500MB per day since that's the maximum amount of data the free version of Splunk will consume in a day.

Sorry for going off-topic! Just thought I'd explain why I was doing something unconventional.



To get back on track discussing deals - if you want some value for your IHG points, you can get over 15 cents per point in value by booking a night at the Intercontinental in Athens from Sept 21 - 22. The Presidential Suite is the only room available with cash at over 6,100 EUR + tax, but you can reserve a standard room for 40k IHG points.

nldogbert

Was this book(able)? I do however still see the 5k points....available.

Cheers!

nacho

The deal is dead.

cruser1

Yes, it could be booked yesterday with the hotel and IHG (as displayed in the screenshot). The deal is dead now. The hotel doesn't have any rooms on Dec 30. The 5k night on Dec 23 is still active.

unusualtravelblog

I don't really understand what you mean. Is there a way to get the presi suite?

cruser1

No, but the only room you can book with cash on Sept 21, 22, and 23 is the Presidential Suite for 6.1k EUR + tax. If you want to stay at the Intercontinental Athens on those dates you can book a standard room with points which would save you several thousand dollars vs booking with cash.

You won't receive the same room with points as cash, but the only alternative to points is cash and if you were to book a room with points your points are basically worth 15 EUR cents each based on how much money you'd save.

cruser1

The low cash rate is gone, but you can again book the night of Dec 23 and Dec 30 for 5k points per night.

RAPC

Love the charts that you have generated cruser1. Nice work and thanks for explaining how you create them, as well as for sharing these deals.

made1111

Seems very good tool to show chart .

therealdre

cruser1 Sorry for going again off-topic but this is a great way of automating searches. I'd be very interested in your scraping scripts to set up in my VPS if you want to share. Cheers!

Concerto

These deals are great but you're better off using points in a way. Anything costing less than $35 won't count as a qualifying stay, I believe, if you need qualifying nights. However, at that price, who cares?

maverikbc

Unfortunately IHG added this a few years ago, I think it's minimum $30 a night before taxes and fees. Still I'd rather spend €13/nt than 5k which I value $25. Similar concept when I choose to fly basic fares and ULCC when price is right despite not earning anything.

BTW, Hasselt is good city to visit and so underrated. I stayed at HIE when they had points break for 5k. Every night when I declined housekeeping, they'd give me a €5 coupon to use at a restaurant nearby this HI. It was a decent restaurant with a good selection of beer (just like many restaurants in Hasselt).