beachmouse

ECR

20k for Amsterdam sounds like a fantastic deal, I'm not surprised the moved it quickly upwards.

FlyerTalker688786

Booked my stay way up to June. Less than 10K points left in my account. Thank you for the heads up. Since last year I have been burning my points constantly. Never leave it to the next devaluation.

TravelTexan

Thanks for the heads up! I used to really like staying at the Hotel Indigo- Paddington in London since it was steps from Paddington station and that was where a lot of trains I used left from, but it used to be 25K points a night, then went up to 35K and now it is going up from 50K to 55K. Those are some big jumps when you put the numbers together over time.

Have some time in Manchester this summer, so I need to go ahead and book since CP and HI are going up.

Raffles

This is probably something different. IHG often launches new hotels with low points prices, presumably as a way of driving occupancy without cutting the headline cash rate.

Happy

We stayed at HI MEL a few times. Over the years it went from 25K to 35K our last stay in Nov 2018.

The cash rate is 160 AUD which translate to 115 USD at the time we stayed. At 35K it was below par value but since we had more pts that we could use in timely manner we chose to redeem even though the value was really poor at 0.0037 per point, quite a bit below the usual par value of 0.005 per pt.

Now the hotel will go to 40K?! And AUD has gone down even further...

Besides hotel may be just 2/3 occupied or even less, during our stay which was in the height of summer vacation time (school holidays just started).

Sometimes I want to believe that hotels actually want the redemption level go up so they can sell at cash rate because they get very little reimbursement from the program unless they are at 90% or above occupancies. Hardly an everyday occurrence for most locations.

I see Australia, US. and UK are hit hard. The cash rates in several random cases are better value than use points.

tbm13

I have a reservation at a hotel that's actually going down. Any chance of IHG refunding some points as a goodwill gesture? (I can't rebook since the stay starts 2 days before this change and because the hotel is sold out for points.)

BaconSF

1353513636

Good to see they are not trying to completely eradicate the 10k tier and are still moving properties to it, however they aren't in terribly desirable locations. As someone who likes travelling off the beaten track though, I appreciate this as these redemptions are cheap for IHG to provide and represent good value compared to the paid rates for some of these properties.

Looks like the 10k tier is basically gone from North America though.

Some changes worth noting:
-Two properties in Munich are listed both as going up and going down.
-Many HIXs in the outskirts of Shanghai going from 10k to 15k, but the HI Shanghai Vista in downtown is moving down to 10k?! I suspect the HI Shanghai Vista will quietly go to 20k a few weeks after this devaluation. Same situation in Beijing for the HI Beijing Temple of Heaven.
-HIX Cape Town is going from 15k to 20k, but the HI Cape Town is dropping from 20k to 15k. I imagine that property will move to 25k quietly pretty quick too.

I know these cities, probably many others I don't know. Makes me wonder how many of the properties moving down are actually going to quietly move up above their current category in a few weeks.

TravelTexan

Think it was 2011

FFlash

Boraxo

I can live with the IC devals as most are only bumping 5k and they haven't bumped any of the 40k IC hotels off the Chase free night cert (except Canada).

Sorry to see UK Shepperton +5k as is the case with many California HI and HIX properties. But that's life - could be much worse. At least IHG still publishes real award charts unlike HHonors.

Pseudo Nim

restlessinRNO

Lionhart - Thank you for this timely notice. Seems like a devaluation to me.

FlyerTalker688786

Although in general I agree with you. But I don't think the HIs you mentioned would go that high.

The reason for HIX going up in points value and HI going down in the same city is that when the two hotels are close together, HIX enjoys much higher occupancy rate than HI (for many reasons, free breakfast comes first, then the cheaper rate comes second). IHG award hotel in the merit of occupancy rate (normal compensation rate VS ADR compensation rate), there is a much better chance for HIX to hit the magic 95% occupancy rate than HI next door or in the same area. Thus IHG needs to adjust the award redemption rate to reflect the popularity which is shown in the hard number of occupancy rate.

So most likely in Shanghai and Cape Town, HIX is performing much better than HI. It is as simple as that. I am sure both HIs in Shanghai and Cape Town will go up in point value at some stage later, but it will most likely to stay below or equal the value of HIXs in the same area, not more.