New IHG Share Forever promotion for the Americas, and quick analysis

IHG's Accelerate 2016 - their spring promotion - comes to an end this month. There's still a few days left, till 30 April 2016, to make your stays count. Once that's done, their new promotion - Share Forever - will start, valid for stays between 1 May 2016 and 5 September 2016. Like many of IHG's promotions of late, there are targeted offers for each member. You can earn at least 65,000 IHG Rewards Club points from this promotion, possibly more. Unfortunately, this promotion is valid only for residents of North and South America.


Registration is required here. This link doesn't work consistently, so another way to register for the promotion is to go to your IHG Rewards Club account and look under Offers. Here are the T&Cs.

As I mentioned earlier, the actual promotion is user-specific. You can also share some of your rewards with other IHG members, if you qualify for them. As a new user, I received the following offer:


Basically, I can earn 68,000 bonus points (the base offer) after staying 34 nights, or 2,000 bonus points a night. Not that this promotion applies to me, but even if it did, I don't find this offer compelling enough. Plus, I don't see myself spending 34 nights in IHG hotels alone, by 5 September 2016.

More loyal IHG members have reported receiving better offers. According to this FT thread, some of the other offers include:
  • 66,900 bonus points after 25 nights.
  • 69,800 bonus points after 28 nights.
  • 70,800 bonus points after 28 nights.
  • 81,000 bonus points after 38 nights.
  • 65,400 bonus points after 24 nights.

First stay bonuses (like my 4,000 points for a stay in May) goes up to 5,000 points for Gold members, 6,000 for Platinum and 7,000 for Spire elite members.

Conclusion

From my own offer, staying 9 nights earns me 28,000 total bonus points, or 3,111 points per night on average. Stays beyond that but short of 34 total nights, doesn't earn me a further bonus. At 34 nights, though I receive 40k bonus points more, this actually lowers the average per night to 2,000 bonus points. So I believe the sweet spot - if you want to call it that - is at 9 nights for an offer similar to mine. You can do your own math to see what the most rewarding level per night is, for your personalised offer. Which is why you should immediately check out your offer, to see if it worth spending your time at IHG hote.s

A warning. IHG often performs audits to identify improper usage of membership accounts. Frequent changing of addresses can count as improper usage, and so I wouldn't advocate changing your address solely for this promotion. Technically, you could set up a new account with a US address, but even so, crackdowns do take place for multiple accounts, and can result in your account being terminated unilaterally by IHG.

I personally find the nights' stay requirement extremely demanding, though I know of some road-warriors who might find this promotion right up their alley. Also, the fact that this is open to only North and South American residents restricts the ability to benefit from this promotion. 

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