christianj

IHG was always the worst program of the large chains but with this change they essentially shouldn't even be calling their program a "loyalty rewards" program any longer. This stupidity just makes me stay there even less than I am now...which is not often since they have been gutting the program for years.

I just check some dates that we always go to NYC later this year and The Muse is 98k per night, The Eventi 100k and The Barclay 87k.

MissVacation

Dynamic pricing doesn't mean that they can increase to however number of points they want right? Isn't it always or should be tie to the price of the room as they first advertised how dynamic pricing works? I m fine if the room price doubles due to seasonal or demand factor then double the number of points required, reasonable. In this case, many hotels increased the number of points required across the board overnight while the room prices stay the same....that's not dynamic pricing, that's devaluation!

notquiteaff

Their definition of dynamic seems to be that it is arbitrary and not linked to the price, demand or quality of the hotel. With the inability to plan for a certain minimum points value on redemptions it makes little sense for me to worry about earning points in this program.

Hawkeyefan

I travelled several times over the past year and stayed in some nice IHG properties before devaluation. You flat missed the boat.

Concerto

The IT of IHG has never been anything to write home about and has often been downright dodgy. How long ago is it that they stopped insisting on 4 digit PIN codes? It's really not that far back. I'm just letting this play out and settle down. It goes without saying, I think, that if everyone does abandon IHG, then there are going to be loads of good deals and redemption possibilities!

Raffles

I have just done a full analysis of London for publication tomorrow - every hotel on a certain day.

Value runs from 0.21p to 0.65p per point (so you can still get 0.9 cents in places).

Oddly the average value across all 38 hotels is unchanged and is potentially better than it was.

There is no difference between luxury, midscale and budget hotels - when grouped together - in terms of value per point. In each category, the top 1/3rd of hotels offered an average of 0.5p (0.7c) of value.

It isn't devaluation. What it is, I'm not sure.

Robl

I’m not sure London is a representative example. Current occupancy rate of 52% doesn’t allow much price hiking.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-in-london-uk/

Raffles

Surprisingly, I didn't look at a day this week and instead focused on a day when UK hotels will be open again :-)

As virtually all UK hotels are closed except for those housing people who fall under a very small number of categories, I promise you there is no 52% occupancy!

fumje

I agree with your interpretation of the words. However, unfortunately, I cannot make IHG hew to reason.

As others do, I find it confusing how divorced the points prices are from the cash prices. That doesn't seem like dynamic pricing, rather it seems like a shambolic devaluation.

An oddity that might be relevant is, about a week ago, I received what seems to be a targeted offer of several thousand bonus points for 3 paid stays in the month of April. For some reason , that happens to be the exact number of award stays I have booked for April.

Robl

You’ve made my point. Hotels are cheap when they are coming out of closure.

estrela

If this stays, I can only thank IHG: At 10% I will instantly switch to hotels.com giving me close to 10% at any hotel plus cashback at so much more choice than IHG.

IHG going the airline way for me then where I only choose by price and time and not by points anymore.

craigthemif

Not when you have an entire country desperate to leave the house whenever restrictions are lifted.

Super Mario

I disagree, IHG was one of the best for point redemptions. A few years ago, I did 4 nights in NYC for NYE at the IC Times Square. It was 70k a night (capped). 280,000 points. Which that in itself was a solid deal on a $3,800 price tag if purchased with cash. Then 4th night free and 10% rebate, I got it for under 200k. Even without that scenario, I was often able to get rooms at 1 cent per point. With my example, I completely understand to have dynamic pricing on such an expensive room. Dynamic pricing shouldn't be some random high number though.

If this is really the end result, I don't know that I will be around with IHG much longer. In general, it seems that any loyalty program just becomes more of a joke. I will continue to bank on it being archaic IT from IHG.

IAN-UK

I'm not sure it's a good idea to bestow a "the best" accolade on a one-off from a few years' ago. Though it certainly was a perk to be able to use regular redemption rates over high season or event-drive cash rates, I think such happiness could be reached through other hotel programmes.

But IHG isn't into creating happiness among its customers. And because of its high-occupancy rules regarding the cash compensation it offered hotels for point stays, it found itself actually paying for that happiness. So things had to change.

I think there was an anxiety to avoid establishing a unequivocal cash value to points, but I assumed dynamic pricing simply meant that points-rates would work on not-too fuzzy links to $-rates.

jn in ca

You are exactly right. I'll give another example to show how unrepresentative they can be. I checked all the Phoenix IHGs for July. I found some really cheap redemptions. Cheap if you don't mind your vacation being Arizona in July.

OTOH, around me, the redemptions for local IHGs have literally doubled with no change in the cash rates. If I want to go to Phoenix in July, I don't need points. The hotels are empty, and cheap. So, going forward, the IHG redemptions are going to be astronomical for anything anyone would want, and cheap only for hotel nights no one wants.

Sorry to leave you IHG but your new scheme is not competitive with other chains.