IHG has changed the terms of their Best Rate Guarantee — and it’s bad news.
No more free night with IHG BRG
IHG has long had a pretty generous Best Rate Guarantee — if you find a better rate on the same room, the first night of your stay is free. If you are on a one-night stay, then you get yourself a free night. This could be particularly good if you were to find a better rate on a fancy suite at a swanky property as it applied to various room types. Unfortunately, IHG has changed the terms and is no longer awarding the first night free.
The new Best Rate Guarantee will match the price and give you 5 times the base points normally earned, up to a cap of 40,000 points. Based on our Reasonable Redemption Values, 40K points are worth about $230 — and with the recent IHG devaluation (See: IHG Award Changes For 2018, New 70k Category Level), top-tier categories now cost nearly double this amount of points (70K). See the updated IHG terms and conditions for complete details.
View from the Wing reports that the British version of the IHG site still shows the old terms for stays in a number of European countries. Whether or not you could leverage that is anybody’s guess — but if you’d like to try, you would likely need to strike while the iron is hot.
H/T: View from the Wing
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[…] Given the average cost of Marriott brands, taking 25% off the rate is likely to be the better deal more frequently than not. Props to Marriott though for offering this additional option and enhancing their Best Rate Guarantee, especially compared to the recent negative changes to IHG’s Best Rate Guarantee. […]
[…] reported on Loyalty Lobby,and Frequent Miler , the hotel group now offers to match the lower price you found and give you 5x bonus IHG points […]
As bad as the change to the BRG is, i’m afraid the maths in your article is even worse:-)
Weird. I had edited it minutes after publishing it. The email went out with the edits I made, but the version here on the site reverted to the original version for some reason. Anyway — you’re right and I did update it. Thanks for commenting!