IHG’s Accelerate promotion for 2016

“Accelerate” seems to be the promotion name for all IHG bonus points promotions. Not that it matters. What’s more relevant is what the promotion means for you. Anyway, IHG has just announced the Accelerate promotion for Q1 of 2016 , valid for stays between 1 January and 30 April 2016. This is similar to certain previous IHG promotions such as this and this. 

This time too, “goals” are customised for individual members based on their elite tier status, stay patterns, etc. Here are the detailed T&Cs for this promotion.

The base offer for new and recent members seems to be either the one below, or something on similar lines:

As you can see, there isn’t much incentive to stay beyond 3 nights, with at least one of them in January. If you are looking at between 4 and 15 nights with IHG, each night earns only 1000 bonus points, in increments of 3000 bonus points, which isn’t a great deal to be honest. If you’ve got this as your offer, you could earn a decent number of points by staying 3 nights during the promotion period, including at least one night in January. That will ensure that you earn 5000+1000+5000 points (for January stay, stay once and 3 nights, respectively). Or if you’re happy with just 6000 bonus points, a one-night stay in January will get you there.

If you’ve received a different offer, you could adjust your calculations accordingly to see how to max out on the bonus points earning.

Here’s what I received as an IHG Gold Elite member:

If you’ve received this or a similar offer, here’s what you could consider:

1. One stay in January, even if it is for just one night, nets you 5000+3000 points, which isn’t bad at all. 
2. A further 4 nights during the promotion period will earn 7500 more bonus points. 
3. If you have more than 1 night’s stay at an IHG property, where possible, consider breaking it up into single-night stays at separate hotels (IHG – and other hotels – considers consecutive nights at the same hotel as a single stay, irrespective of the number of bookings). And ensure that these bookings (which will be 2 or more) are done using the member-exclusive rate. This will earn a further 4000 bonus points. 
4. As an alternative to the above (member-exclusive rates may not always be available), consider spending $40 or equivalent on F&B at an IHG hotel (it doesn’t seem to require a stay for this). 
5. e. Completing 1, 2, and one of 3 or 4 above, will earn the achievement bonus of 34900 bonus points. That makes it a grand total of 54400 bonus points (for option 1,2,3) 51000 bonus points (option 1,2,4) and 55000 bonus points (for if you complete all of 1,2,3,4). 

50000 points can be quite useful, when you look at the points required for an award night at different categories of hotels:

• Category 1 = 10,000 points 
• Category 2 = 15,000 points 
• Category 3 = 20,000 points 
• Category 4 = 25,000 points 
• Category 5 = 30,000 points 
• Category 6 = 35,000 points 
• Category 7 = 40,000 points 
• Category 8 = 45,000 points 
• Category 9 = 50,000 points 

Also check out this map of IHG properties posted by PointsWithACrew. In all, some of the offers can be pretty decent and provide good earning opportunities for a tidy sum of bonus points.

You can access the IHG Accelerate 2016 promotion here.

What offer have you received? Do you plan to actively stay with IHG for this promotion?