This episode is part 1 of a 4 part series covering the 4 major hotel rewards programs. This episode is all about IHG, including- How IHG points work, should you buy IHG points, how to keep them from expiring, and more.
Ever wondered how to elevate your travel experiences without breaking the bank? Join us as we share insider tips on maximizing IHG Rewards, from earning points to enjoying luxurious stays at some of the most sought-after properties.
This episode isn't just about points; it's about making memories with family and four-legged friends too. We take you through our preparations for an almost cost-free vacation at the stunning Kimpton Seafire, discussing the fine print like resort fees and booking strategies for big families. The IHG brand's expansive portfolio, including pet-friendly policies and exciting new hotel openings like the Kimpton in Roatan, opens a world of aspirational destinations. So, if you're itching for that next family adventure or a romantic escape, let us guide you through the IHG rewards landscape for an unforgettable getaway.
This episode is part 1 of a 4 part series covering the 4 major hotel rewards programs. This episode is all about IHG, including- How IHG points work, should you buy IHG points, how to keep them from expiring, and more.
Ever wondered how to elevate your travel experiences without breaking the bank? Join us as we share insider tips on maximizing IHG Rewards, from earning points to enjoying luxurious stays at some of the most sought-after properties.
This episode isn't just about points; it's about making memories with family and four-legged friends too. We take you through our preparations for an almost cost-free vacation at the stunning Kimpton Seafire, discussing the fine print like resort fees and booking strategies for big families. The IHG brand's expansive portfolio, including pet-friendly policies and exciting new hotel openings like the Kimpton in Roatan, opens a world of aspirational destinations. So, if you're itching for that next family adventure or a romantic escape, let us guide you through the IHG rewards landscape for an unforgettable getaway.
Speaker 1:
In today's episode we're doing a deep dive into all things IHG. So you may know IHG hotels as Holiday Inn or Kempton those are some of the more popular brands but we are doing a deep dive into the entire rewards program, including how to earn points and some awesome places you can stay.
Speaker 1:
Hi, I'm raya and I'm duane and we are your hosts of the travel party of five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world we will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as five around the world.
Speaker 2:
We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.
Speaker 1:
So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.
Speaker 1:
So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn in, so before we jump into our main, topic today, which is going to be all about the ihHG Rewards Program, I thought we could first give an update on where we are at with our globalist status quest. So earlier in the year we shared that we kind of made the off-the-cuff decision to try for globalist this year with Hyatt, and so now that we're a quarter of the way through the year, essentially we have nine nights under our belt, yeah um.
Speaker 1:
So we're definitely not a quarter of the way there, because um global status is 60 nights 60 qualifying nights and so, which is quite a bit A quarter of that would be $15,000. And yep, we're not there. However, we have earned five qualifying nights through our Hyatt business card. You get five nights for every $10,000 in spend, but we are almost to a second five, which would put us at $14,000, which is almost a quarter of the way and you only have the hyatt business card correct yes, just me.
Speaker 1:
Yes, because I'm the high. The globalist status is going to be under my name, so all of the hotel stays are in my name, and part of that is because, well, there's a bunch of reasons, but the main reason is that I have a bunch of travel coming up where you will not be there yeah and we're staying at Hyatt's. So by the end of May I should have we should have like over 20 nights, which will be great yeah so, um, anyways, that's where we're at with that.
Speaker 1:
Just wanted to give a quick update, um, and so let's jump into our main topic, which is going to be all about IHG. And I know that we talk a lot about Hyatt's on this podcast, and there's a lot of reasons for that, and they're good reasons, but we actually have a couple of stays coming up at other hotel brands, and so I thought, over the next few weeks, we could spend each episode doing a deep dive into what I think of are the four major hotel brands and their different rewards programs, because, as much as Hyatt works for us, I know that it doesn't work for some people. And so, yeah, we're starting with IHG, so we'll talk about how to earn the points, where you can use the points, and maybe give some examples of places that look amazing.
Speaker 2:
So let's backtrack. What are those four?
Speaker 1:
Oh, so in my mind they are Hyatt IHG. Which stands for Hold on Marriott and Hilton. So those are the four in my mind. So IHG stands for Intercontinental Hotel Group, and NerdWallet actually ranked IHG as their second ranked hotel awards program. Hyatt was first, which is not a surprise to me, but IHG came in second. Do you want to share a little bit about the different brands they have and how many there are and all that fun stuff?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there are 19 brands under the ihg umbrella, um, some of which include holiday inn, holiday inn express, candlewood suites, staybridge suites. Um, we recently stopped into a crown plaza, found out that was an ihg. But their nicer brands are like the indigo and Kempton brands, which are pretty fancy and those are, or the Kempton is what we're going to stay out here in a month or so yes, pretty excited about that yeah, so overall, ihg has I think it's like 6,000 open hotels in more than 100 countries and there are like 1,800 more set to open over the next five years.
Speaker 1:
So they have a pretty big footprint. I would say that's bigger than the Hyatt footprint. And yes, we're staying at a Kimpton later this summer and this will actually be our first points stay at an ihg hotel. Um, this will be a kid's free trip. I am expecting full luxury, um, and we're really excited. We just have to cross our fingers that there are no hurricanes that week, because we are going in hurricane season, the very the very beginning of Hurricane Susan, yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1:
So let's talk about the different IHG status levels and then we can talk about how you can earn points and what cards to open.
Speaker 2:
So there are five different statuses that you can earn First, being club and what you just sign up and you're automatically.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's just like Marriott Bond Boy. You just literally sign up for a free account and you're the club. So why don't you list out the five in a row, and then we can?
Speaker 2:
Okay, yeah so these are in order starting low. So starting with club, then it's the silver elite, the gold elite, the platinum elite and then the diamond elite and basically those statuses are earned by qualifying knights.
Speaker 1:
So if you have 10 qualifying knights, you get silver, if you have 20, you get gold, if you have 20, you get gold, if you have 40, you get platinum, and 70 qualifying knights is diamond. Now you can also earn some of these statuses just by opening up different credit cards, so certain cards will come with automatic silver status or gold status. I don't think we'll go super deep into the statuses beyond that, but I think, if you're interested, there's a lot of articles online about that. Let's talk about how you earn points and what statuses can then be associated with that, because here's the thing, status is really good if you want upgrades that's really the main point and if you're not traveling a ton, then the status doesn't make a huge difference in my opinion.
Speaker 1:
So currently there are three IHG credit cards that are currently available for new signups.
Speaker 1:
There's also a couple others that are older that you could probably product change one of these cards we're about to talk about next into, but they're not available for like new signups, so we're not going to talk about them today, but the three that you can currently sign up for today are the IHG Traveler card, the IHG Premier card and the IHG Premier Business card.
Speaker 1:
So the first two are personal cards and the third one is a business, which, as a reminder, the business card will not count against your 524 status with Chase and the other two will. So the Traveler card has a $0 annual fee. The current signup bonus is, I believe, 80,000 points. After you spend $2,000 within the first three months and with this card on reward stays, you get a free night when you redeem points for any stay of four or more nights, and that benefit is going to be the same for all of the cards we're going to talk about. So basically, what that means is if you book four nights in a row on points at an IHG property, you're only going to pay for three, but that benefit is only available to you if you have this card or one of the cards we're going to talk about. So that's a good benefit.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, not bad, especially for a $0 annual fee. Um, I think the sign up bonus is just not that great, but you're also not spending a ton of money. So I mean 80, but 80 000 points at ihg. Could I mean it would get you one night at the kimpton sea fire or like a couple, two to three at like a holiday inn, depending on location and time. Um, you also get automatic silver status with this card, and remember, silver is their second lowest um, because they go club, then silver, then gold, then platinum, then elite then diamond elite oh sorry, diamond elite, yes.
Speaker 1:
So I guess, like the traveler card is probably not the card I would start with, yeah, but if you just needed extra points like that's a good, easy way to get 80,000 points, I think that the IHG Premier card is the way to go. This is the card that I have and this is the sign up bonus that got us the stay at the Kimpton Seafire, and I'm going to talk more about the details of that at the end of this. But this one does have a $99 annual fee at the end of this. But this one does have a $99 annual fee and the current signup bonus is 140,000 points after you spend $3,000 in the first three months. But they sometimes do elevated offers on this, and so when I signed up, it was 165,000 points for $3,000 in spend, and so if this card is on your radar, I would wait for an elevated offer, especially because this is a personal card and it will count towards your 524 status.
Speaker 1:
You get the same free, like fourth night free, basically, when you use points. You also get a statement credit of up to $100 every four years that can be used for global entry or TSA pre-check. You just pay for that service on this card and then they automatically give you a statement credit, but again, it's one time every four years. And then you also get an anniversary night certificate on your card anniversary every year. That's good for a night at any eligible IHG property and it's worth up to 40,000 points, but you can top it off, like if you want to stay at a place, that's maybe 60,000 points, you can top it off with 20,000 extra points and stay there for that. So I mean that anniversary night certificate alone is worth the $99 annual fee, in my opinion, as long as you're using it For sure.
Speaker 1:
And then you also get platinum elite status by having this card, and that is the second highest status level, and so that's the level where you can start to kind of expect upgrades. And so I have now had this card for one year and I just got this month in April, the free anniversary night and generally cards that have an annual fee. I would close after the first year as long as if I'm not getting benefit from them. But this is a card that I'm going to keep and I'm going to keep it, I don't know, for at least the next year and just evaluate if it makes sense going forward. But because we have that Platinum Elite status, I am expecting an upgrade at the Kimempton Seafire.
Speaker 1:
I don't know if we'll get it, we will report back, but, yeah, pretty excited about that. The other thing that's important to know about IHG is that the points typically expire after 12 months, unless you have gold status or higher. So this card would keep your points from expiring, whereas the Traveler card would not, because that only gets you silver status yeah, do I have points expire they do not expire, to my knowledge.
Speaker 1:
No, um, okay, so there's one card left, which is the IHG premier business. You want to talk about that one?
Speaker 2:
yeah sure, um. This card comes with a $99 annual fee. Sign up bonus um is 140 bonus points after spending four thousand um in the first three months. But as of now there's a limited time offer of 35,000 points, so making that 175,000 bonus points, but you would have to spend 7,000 in the first six months of opening this account, which is doable for a family of five, I'd say oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:
So basically the four thousand in three months gets you 140, and then another three thousand gets you another 35.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, again, this comes with the anniversary, the free night on your anniversary of opening up the card. Also an additional free night if you spend more than sixty thousand dollars on purchases in a calendar year, which is well, keep in mind, this is a business card.
Speaker 1:
So I mean, for some businesses, yeah, that's totally doable, but again, it really only makes sense if you're like striving for the ihg status and you like that's your primary hotel that you want to stay in.
Speaker 2:
So um, yeah, and with this card you get a hundred dollar statement credit and ten thousand bonus points when you spend at least twenty thousand dollars in a calendar year. You also get the $100 credit every four years towards global entry TSA pre-check. And you get the fourth night free on points days.
Speaker 1:
Yep, so I know that was maybe a little bit of a snooze, but hopefully that was a quick rundown on the three cards that you can get to earn these IHG points. Beyond those three cards, you can also transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to IHG. So again, those would be points that you would earn from opening up, like the Chase Sapphire cards or any of the Chase Inc business cards. I would not recommend that because you can get a lot more bang for your buck saving those chase points for Hyatt or certain airlines. But I guess if you were in a pinch and maybe you just needed like a thousand points, I guess you could do that. I mean, they're your points, you can do what you want, but personally that's not something I would ever do, yeah. So here's, however, like what it, here's what it does make sense to do as far as IHG points, because this is one scenario, let's say, where buying points actually might make sense. Okay, so normally I would never advise buying points because it it generally it just is a waste of money. But IHG often has sales where you can basically buy double the points, basically like a two for one. So here's an example where this makes sense that I found yesterday. So the IHG Kempton Seafire costs $1,139 for one night or 70,000 points for the same room same night. So you can either pay the 1100 and whatever in cash or you can buy 70,000 points for $560 on their website currently. So in that case buying the points gets you the room essentially for half price and you know, if your choices were between paying cash or buying the points, it obviously makes more sense to buy the points. The other option is if you just need a few points to like top off your stay. So this is actually what we did to book the Kempton Seafire. So I think I had 185,000 points, I think, total from I had my sign up bonus plus you obviously earn points on the spend that you put on the card and the total stay amount was 210,000 points. So I needed to buy 25,000 points in order to pay for the stay and at the time it was like buy one, get 0.8 of a point for free. So basically, if you buy 100 points, you're going to get 180. And so I did that and I think at the time it was $160. So I paid $160 for 25,000 points and then that enabled us to book the hotel stay for basically free, so, excuse me.
Speaker 1:
So here's where I think IHG has leverage over Hyatt is it's much more accessible for larger families. I also think if you have plans to visit some of the national parks, especially in the US, then IHG points are a really great way that you can stay with your family near national parks for almost free. They actually have an entire landing page on their website dedicated to all the locations that they have near national parks, and it's it's a lot. I can put a link to that in the show notes. This, the IHG card, or the the national parks is actually why I opened the IHG card to begin with was we wanted to go to Yellowstone in the summer. It's been two years now. It hasn't happened yet yet. It just keeps getting pushed out, um, for, you know, in favor of other trips. But that's originally why I opened the card, and so if national parks are on your radar, a hundred percent, this is this is the card to go there with, because the Hyatts don't. There isn't always a hyatt near a national park. So, um, okay, what else?
Speaker 2:
ihg also seems to be a fairly pet friendly brand, uh, and in fact kempton specifically allows pets for no additional fee, which most hotels charge you a fee a nightly fee? Yes, and you can't. Most hotels don't allow you to leave the pets alone in the hotel room um Kempton also has a secret password that changes periodically and if you say it when you check in, you get a treat or some extra snacks or something like that yeah, yeah, so I don't.
Speaker 1:
We're gonna have to figure out what the secret password is before we go and say it.
Speaker 2:
Hopefully it's like a margarita this time, or something.
Speaker 1:
Maybe, I don't know. The other thing that I think is really important to know is that a lot of these hotels, the IHG hotels, are still going to charge you a resort fee. So this is something that's really different from Hyatt, and probably why Hyatt is ranked number one, especially for award travel, is when you stay at a Hyatt on points, you pay zero dollars. You do not pay a resort fee. You do not pay anything like that. That is not the case for IHG, so you should expect to spend whatever their resort fee is out of pocket per night.
Speaker 1:
So when we go to the Kempton, it's $80 a night, um, so we're going to stay for four nights. So that's $320 that we will pay, um, plus the 160 that we've already paid for to buy the you know the extra points. So what's that? For80. And so basically, we're going to pay $480 cash for a stay that costs like $5,000. And I feel great about that. So I just want to give a heads up, though, that it is not going to be completely free and that you will pay a resort fee if there is one. So I just don't want anyone to be surprised at checkout. Okay, let's get into the fun part, because there's a few aspirational stays at different properties within IHG that we would love to visit. So do you want to talk about the Kempton Seafire, since that's where we're going?
Speaker 2:
Well, to be honest, I don't know much, I just know about what's on the website. Again, it's Kempton Seafire in the Grand Cayman Islands.
Speaker 1:
it looks incredible, looks very family, family friendly yes, it like from my understanding is it's super family friendly. However, it is far for us because we live on the west coast and so getting us plus all of our kids, there just feels stressful to me, especially because the Southwest flights are like you can't book direct from Southwest to the Grand Caymans. I had to book four separate flights and we actually have an overnight stay in Orlando on the way there. But here's the thing I was going to say.
Speaker 1:
That's important about families is when I was searching, the Kimpton Seafire has rooms that sleep five or six, but I couldn't seem to book any of those on points. So four was the maximum for points days and I couldn't find any data points about can you add a fifth person, and maybe is there an an extra charge, but they do have rooms that sleep five or six. So probably what I would do is I would try to book a room for four on points and maybe email the hotel and ask them if you can add a fifth person. I would do it via email. That way, if they say yes, you have it in writing when you arrive. That's probably the route that I would go.
Speaker 2:
Um, yeah, another Kempton we've been looking at is in Honduras. It's the Kempton Roatan Roatan Roatan. It's definitely high on our list. I mean it looks incredible again you know by the website, there's also been a lot of good reviews of this place um some recently because it's it's very new, like it just opened this year.
Speaker 1:
I think, yeah, some people are saying it's their favorite spot yeah favorite place to go well, and what's funny is we just discovered this hotel in the last few weeks, and also in the last few weeks we met someone at a birthday party who was telling duane that honduras is really beautiful. And so it's so funny because honduras, I'll tell you it was never on our list.
Speaker 1:
It was not on our radar, so, but it's in central america, it's not far from costa rica, um the. The tricky thing, I think, is uh, you cannot drink the water in honduras like you can in costa rica, which would make me hesitant to bring our kids.
Speaker 1:
Not because, just because, they're, they're little, with them being sick well and they're little and I just feel like they would easily forget that they cannot brush their teeth with the tap water, that kind of thing. Like, if you know, our youngest is four, so if she were a little bit older then I would feel a little bit more comfortable about it. Probably Another one and this is probably this is a departure from the two tropical destinations, but there is a Kempton. It's called the Kempton Armory Hotel in Bozeman, montana, and it just looks stunning. Like I can't even I'm not even going to do it justice, but I think if you go to the website and and Google it, it's, it looks so beautiful and what a fun place for kids. So much open space, the mountains, I mean it looks gorgeous.
Speaker 1:
And then the last one, it was actually a Kempton. I don't know how to say this. How would you say that Malai, malai In Bangkok? That also looked really beautiful. As you can tell, we've stuck with Kempton's for the aspirational hotels, primarily because we are very much people who believe the room does matter when you go on vacation, and so we like to stay in places that feel luxurious, because traveling with kids is not always fun, but having a really nice, luxurious hotel to stay in makes it better, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:
I can agree.
Speaker 1:
We will do a full episode on the Kimpton Seafire when we return, but that is not for a couple of months, so until then, I hope this was helpful. In the show notes I will put a link to the credit cards that we mentioned, including the one that we have, and if you have any questions or you have a favorite IHG hotel, find us on Instagram at Travel Party 5. Thanks so much. We'll catch you on the next one. Appreciate it.