How often does IHG have the point breaks. Is it once or twice a year? We do most of our traveling in the summer time, hopefully there will be some decent deals then, thanks.

Seems to be four times a year, so the next one should appear in late April. Unless they reduce the frequency of these offers with the latest enhancements.

Sounds like I am not the only one who is expecting to see the next list and if they have made any adjustments after "trying out" the enhancements. I only made a few speculative res this time around but very soon cancelled them, so in fact this round was the firts time I did not use a single PB res. Tells something, hopefully IHG listens unless their purpose is only to ruin the whole PB thing.

Then it seems to have worked well for many others, even if it has ruined it for you :)

Rooms have been kept available for longer, presumably meaning more people have been able to benefit from the discounts.


BTW speculative reservations ruin things for others: the nights you cancel are unlikely to return the pointbreak inventory, so you have effectively prevented others from taking up the offer of rooms.

BTW when I learned about pointbreaks I was also in the beginning annoyed by this. But then realized that this is the way people act, some people speculatively for their upcoming trip plans as back-up, and others (infamously) harshly speculative multiple bookings with no intention to stay but instead sell them further or whatever. I am now nor ever in the latter group, but the former yes. It is today the bad rule of the game. Everybody does it. So now I had 2 bookings for trips to come but finally cancelled as I found cheaper and better alternatives.
Nothing I feel guilty for. But it is sad.

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and i would never suggest you should feel guilty! I was pointing out, perhaps not elegantly, that there are many ways the "game" can be spoiled for other players.



In the old sytem rooms were (essentially) free for many players: now there's a more significant price to them, but in many cases it's still a generous discount.

"Everybody does it" - I don't do it. Never have done. It's this kind of selfish behaviour that ruins Pointbreaks for other people.

While not a new idea, but now then as an improvement idea I would suggest them to go back to 5k PB but make the res non-refundable. That would stop "just-in-case" bookings for most people I think, even if 5k is not huge amount of points to lose.

I hope indeed Pointbreaks in the future would be non-cancellable just like any other non-cancellable discount rate.
And yes, I hope non-cancellable IHG PointBreaks would prevent such IHG members with selfish behavior to book without any intentional stay, or even sell it!
And those who sold PointBreaks against cash should be banned from IHG for life...

I agree that non-refundable rates would cut down on the speculative bookings. But be careful what you wish for, we've had enough enhancements lately.

As long as they are able to provide more hotels with PointBreaks - why not? Before the 5/10/15 PB intro, all PB sales before were 90% rubbish.
Either you got a hotel located in the middle of nowhere, OR centrally located hotel in Mumbai or somewhere in Southeast Asia where the cash price was low anyway.
I remembered couple years back when IC Bora Bora was in PB sale, all the rooms were sold within minutes. How many of those are speculative or even sold to a non-member?

Honestly, I don't even mind if they introduce non-refundable 20/30k PB for IC HK / Tokyo Bay - as long as they're available for booking - why not?
I value IHG Points at 5 EUR/k. So even a 30k PB for IC Tokyo Bay would still be a rational choice.

I only hope we get a full preview list this time, it makes planning the right stays possible

I don't see how this would be practical at all for IHG. They would still have exactly as many bookings (i.e. however many they allocate to PB's), just a lot more no shows. And it'll be new, so the hotels won't have any way to project how many no shows to expect. And I assume IHG still has to pay the hotels for no show point bookings. Maybe it would help some customers, those who don't plan ahead enough to book things the day the PB list comes out, but it would hurt a lot of others -- one man's "speculative" is another man's "flexible"-- and it would be lose-lose for IHG.

I understand there are probably people who are egregious with their bookings, but I think most of us only book things we think we will probably use. I make a lot of PB bookings, and cancel plenty, but probably use at least 75% of my bookings. Where's the line on "ruining it for others?" I did just last week cancel 10 nights worth of PB bookings at London Hammersmith (which sold out very quickly) because my wife was in the hospital in another country. I was 100% sure I'd use that booking when I made it, but I'm so glad I didn't have to waste 150k ihg points to add to a really, really bad week. You can't be 100% sure of anything, so flexible bookings are nice.