Could You Use Stacking To Get Over 45% Off Every 4 Night IHG Stay?
I was looking up something for a reader the other day and I was looking through the terms of the Chase IHG Premier card. That is when I noticed a perk I have overlooked in the past. The card gives you a 20% discount when you use it to purchase IHG points. I almost never buy points but it had me thinking, would this be a way to get almost 50% off 4 night stays with IHG?
Before you go further this is just me spit balling and you would need both IHG credit cards to make it work, which some people do have. But even if you have just one of the cards you can still get huge discounts.
Breaking It Down
IHG often has points sales where you can get points for $0.005 each. That is about the going rate or value of IHG points. These purchases are run by points.com which is the company listed in the terms of the 20% off perk:
Save at least 20% on points purchases when you pay for those points with your IHG® Rewards Club Premier or Traveler Credit Cards. Point purchase amounts are subject to change by IHG® Rewards Club. These points are Non-Qualifying points and do not count towards Elite qualification. Upon completion of the points purchase, you agree that the total dollar amount of the points, minus the discount, will be immediately charged to your credit card. The cost for the points purchased is non-refundable. The 20% discount cannot be combined with any other points purchase offer. Point purchase transactions managed by Points.comOpens Overlay.
That second to last sentence “The 20% discount cannot be combined with any other points purchase offer” has me wondering if that includes the 100% point bonuses or not. If someone knows for sure let us know. But since this is a thought exercise and terms are often not enforced the way they are intended we are going to assume it works.
The Math
Lets take a 4 night stay at 50,000 points per night as an example. That would normally cost 200,000 points for the stay or $1000 to purchase the points needed with the promo. That is also a reasonable expectation on the redemption. So our baseline cost is $1,000.
If you have the Premier card you get the 4th night free dropping the points cost to 150,000 points for the 4 night stay. But if you also have the old IHG card you get 10% back on the stay as well. We have already confirmed with Chase that these two perks stack for anyone with both cards. That drops the points you will use for the stay down to 135,000.
To purchase the 135,000 points needed you would need to spend $675 at 1/2 a cent each. That is already a savings of $325 which is huge. But you still, hopefully, get the 20% off on the points purchase. That drops the $675 cost down to $540. By stacking all of these perks and discounts you can get a $1,000 stay for $540 or 46% off!
UPDATE:
Looks like reader Laurel says that the 20% off does not stack with the points purchase discount. Stacking the two credit card perks is still possible for 32.5% off but not as good without that additional 20% off on top of it. And also remember that you need to have enough points for all 4 nights to get the 4th night free which is a terrible set up. It may be possible to work around that if you call in to have them manually book it. Otherwise you may need to have a small stash of points on hand to begin with.
Conclusion
This is purely hypothetical at this point since I don’t know for sure if the 20% off stacks with a points sale. I would lean towards thinking it does but hopefully someone can chime in on that with first hand experience. But you can use what you have in your arsenal to get severely discounted stays at IHG hotels. Even piecing bits and pieces of this plan together can bring you some nice savings if you were going to pay cash for the rooms anyway.
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[…] I was looking up something for a reader the other day and I was looking through the terms of the Chase IHG Premier card. That is when I noticed a perk I have overlooked in the past. The card gives you a 20% discount when you use it to purchase IHG points. I almost never buy points but it had me thinking, would this be a way to get almost 50% off 4 night stays with IHG?Before you go further this is just me spit balling and you would need both IHG credit cards to make it work, which some people do have. But even if you have just one of the cards you can still get huge discounts. LEARN MORE! […]
Mark – I had purchased some points last year with a 100% bonus and used my Premier card. I did NOT get the 20% discount and recently opened a case with both IHG and Chase. Chase told me to talk to IHG. IHG told me that you don’t get the 20% discount on a bonus purchase.
Thanks for the confirmation Michael. It would be sweet if they did stack…too bad 🙁
Tried and failed for extra 20% off on purchase of points where you get bonus. No stacking of discounts on point purchases. Stick with buying with public available point bonus!
Thanks Steve….sad to hear that is the case 🙁
Here is the big elephant in your calculation. First of all you have to have 200,000 points to begin with. For some strange reason even though you only need 150,000 in the end, the IHG system requires you to have the full 4 nite number of points but, only charges you the 3 nites in the end. And since you only get the 10% credit of points after your stay, your calculation using 135,000 points can’t happen and you need to change the number of points needed to 200,000 in order to start the process so in your example you are paying $1,000 for the points or $250 per nite. Sorry about that but, recently was trying to do a 4 nites for the price of 3 and couldn’t figure out why neither the website or app would allow me to purchase my stay. Contact IHG and got the bad news. Had a fit as Chase says in their explanation of the new card you got the 3 nites for the cost and the 4th nite free. Yes in the end but, if only have enough points for the 3 nites you are out of luck.
Waited an hour and a half on hold to talk to a Manager and she manually added enough points to get me to 180,000 for a 45,000 per nite stay and amazingly she didn’t take away the points in the end and I got booked. Pretty shady IMHO and nothing like Hilton 5 nites for the price of 4 where you only need points for the 4 nites.
I second Laurel. It’s been reported multiple times on previous IHG point sales that you don’t get the 20% off. You should update the title so it doesn’t look like a click bait
Updated 😉
You don’t get the 20% off points purchases if there’s already a bonus.
You have given it a try? Thanks for the info Laurel
I was under the assumptions that discount points purchase promos do not stack with the 20% off from the card.
That is what I am not sure of – how it works in reality but it sounds like Laurel has tried it before and says no go