Donate points to support Tsunami Relief
 

This is a great idea being led by IHG, it would be good to see Airlines like Qantas, BA etc following in the steps of its Hotel partners. Over to you Qantas?

3points :-:

(InterContinental Hotels/Priority Club
Priority Club members can donate Priority Club points in increments of 10,000 points to the following relief agencies directly involved in Southeast Asia: American Red Cross, C.A.R.E. and UNICEF. Members can donate online:
Donate Priority Club Points

Or by calling the Priority Club service center at 1-800-272-9273.

NOTE: Members who donate their points to UNICEF to help support Tsunami relief efforts in Asia will have the points converted to US dollars and added to a donation fund which will be matched by InterContinental Hotels Group up to a maximum of $125,000.)

I don't want to be negative, but won't it be more useful just to donate cash rather than airline FF points? I presume the points would be mainly used to redeem flights (but QF is already quite generous in that regard) whereas cash can be used to buy whatever is needed? Personally, I will donate cash and use my QF points for my own award addiction:).

I suppose if you had a few orphan points to get rid off, you could donate them but most schemes I have seen are multiples of 1000's eg starting at 5000 points.

The points donation from Intercontinental get converted to $US rather than offering hotel stays

As it says on their site

"Donate your points to UNICEF to help support Tsunami relief efforts in Asia. Points will be converted to US dollars and added to a donation fund which will be matched by InterContinental Hotels Group up to a maximum of $125,000."

If they are converting on a 1 - 1 basis ( as it seems to suggest) then it seems incredibly generous of ICH ( 10,000 points => USD20,000 )

Dave

I'm not so sure they are being so generous...they don't explicitly say they are converting it on a 1:1 basis. On doing a quick a search, post Sept 11, they were offering the following:

http://frequentflier.com/reliefmiles.htm
So if they are following the same conversion rate this time, 10000 points will be converted to US$80...better than nothing but not nearly as generous.

One other important point: Cash donations are tax deductable whereas, airline / hotel point donations are not!

And from here, not all progarms are converting them to cash.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/annou...ouncementid=57

...so I personally will be sticking to donating cash:)