3544quebec

Are there still curfews in Fiji 8 years on from the Military Coup - I did not know that. And which of the other 3 previously Southern Hemisphere-located cities with PB offers this 2 months (Townsville,Jo'burg or Rosario) has shifted along the faultline up to the Northern hemisphere? My best guess is that Bob Katter has led a military coup and Northern Queensland is now part of Japan (sorry, very parochial pun that few outside Australia may understand)

And thanks as always to jmgriffin for providing the very helpful map of PB properties.

beachmouse

Same here. It's nice to get out of BFE (no, not the airport in Germany, the other meaning of the acronym) for a long weekend for the cost of gas & food. Would take Sarasota, Jacksonville FL, and Mobile, AL any day over last time's list of Perry, FL or Enterprise, AL which are even more BFE than where I live.

whimike

No question the list is very lop-sided, but where are you getting your facts?

The Southern Hemisphere has about 10% - 13% of the worlds population, where are you coming up with 2/3?

The land with the military coup and curfews, I assume you mean Bangkok, but that is in the Northern Hemisphere, not the Southern.

It sounds as if you are talking about Asia, not the Southern Hemisphere.

I would much rather have a weak PB list than no PB list at all.

chunky649

I think it is happening on the Chinese travel discussion groups similar to FT. That may be why Chinese PBs in major cities sell out so quickly. Someone else hinted that people in those markets write computer scripts to automate this. This might also be the reason why we only have 3 PBs in China this round... (purely conspiracy theory on my part)

Regarding all the complaints that this list suck: I used to wonder why someone who lives in city X would complain about the lack of PB in city/country A,B,C,D,Y,Z,etc... Are they travelling to Munich AND Beijing AND NYC in the next 3 months?! From my prespective, I don't care how big the list. I only care if there is availability in an area I will be travelling to. Having said that, I've been following PBs for many years now. While I booked 3 rooms for my own east coast road trip later in July, and 2 other rooms for family and friends (most I ever booked in 1 period), I do observe that in terms of number of big city (or at least NEAR big cities) and the numbers of CP/IC is noticably lower than previous years...

Regarding the comment about low PB numbers in "other hemisphere". Do you realize that ICH doesn't have a strong presence in that half of the world? Do you notice there are always lots of PB in the UK? :-)

holtju2

Properties don't get to decide whether they are on the Pointbreaks list or not. The list is done by the IHG.

I have spoken with several GM's and one told me that they wouldn't have minded being included during their low season but it was high and they didn't have the minimum allocation (5%) limit set.

holtju2

There are ZERO PointBreaks in China this time around unless you think that India, Thailand and Japan are regions of China.

garethmorgan

I see only Japan is left in Asia now. Thailand and India have gone.

garethmorgan

I leave the UK in about 4 weeks and then, over 5 weeks, I'll be in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Melbourne, Sydney, LA, Boston, NYC, DC and Williamsburg (pre-paid Comfort Inn package - blast). I've got Bangkok and 3 different PBs on my wander down the East Coast plus a PB in Doncaster to break a drive home from a meeting before I set off.

waygora

Downtown Montreal is gone as well.

holtju2

CP BKK was bookable for 5K per night at least an hour ago when I was checking for the availability.

Usually, the hotels maybe available for 5K for short period of time after the PB page on IHG.com has been updated.

AMDB7

Was just about to pay for flights for a quick stopover in Genoa but the HI Genoa has just dropped off the list in the last half an hour and gone back to 15k points per night.
Anyone had any luck getting PB nights here, or was that hotel being on the list a glitch in the first place? Not a particularly glamorous location so I wouldn't have expected it to drop off the list that quickly usually.

garethmorgan

It's very popular because it's right by the ferry terminal and there are a lot of long distance ferries that operate from there. We use the ferry to go to Palermo and back because we have a house in Calabria (special rental terms for FTers ). That means that we need a close hotel to the terminal for an overnight on the way back to the UK and others use it for a stop the night before a voyage.

AMDB7

Can understand the location being popular because of the ferry/cruise connections, just didn't expect it to drop off the list so quickly from showing good general PB availability 2 hours ago, to nothing on PB now. But there's still good availability at the 15k point rate.

Anyway, c'est la vie and all that, I should have been a little quicker! But it does make me wonder if anyone got any PB nights here or whether it went "off-list" for a different reason.

chunky649

In that case, I'm sure everyone who travels like you do hang out on this thread and complain every quarter. ;-)

As answered by someone else, PB is an advertising point for ICH. It is not a 'reward' for loyal members or anyone else. I really wish people would stop complaining that "ICH is treating them poorly for their loyalty".

chunky649

I have an interesting observation:

I booked this hotel last night (2 nights), and this morning, I cancelled it because I can't use it. I noticed the cancellation policy as being NONE (i.e. you lose your money). I went ahead and cancelled anyway. Then I checked my activities. I did not see any activities for the Montreal book nor cancellation. (I saw all my other booking/cancellations around the same time/dates) Since I don't keep count of my points that closely, I don't know if ICH kept my 10,000 points... I can see the cancelled reservations.