IHG points sale with up to 80% bonus

IHG has been rather active this year with selling points, and continues to do so with a personalised bonus offer that is open to all members. This time, the bonus is up to 80%, and is available for purchase up to 9 September 2016. Here's more, and my view on should you buy points at this price.

Offers are personalised. The promotion is available here.

You'll need to login to view your specific offer.

My personal offer in this case is:

• Buy between 1,000 - 9,000 points and earn a 40% Bonus. 
• Buy between 10,000 - 60,000 points and earn an 80% Bonus.

Other offers seem to be a variant of the above, except that the cut-off level for getting the 80% bonus seems to change (there's one known instance of this being 14,000 points instead of my 9,000).

The maximum purchase you can make is for 60,000 points (the most you can buy in a year), which will yield a total of 108,000 points when you add the 80% bonus. This will cost $690, or roughly Rs 46,200.

Conclusion

At an 80% bonus level, my offer results in buying points at about Rs 0.43 each. We at the blog value IHG Rewards Club points (from an Indian perspective) at Rs 0.26 apiece, which therefore suggests that this purchase at Rs 0.43 each might be inefficient. I cannot seem to readily find any IHG property that offers a value greater than this purchase price, for a stay before December this year.

However, you may be able to get some value out of this promotion if you use points to book hotels overseas, particularly during the Christmas-New Year season, when room rates can get obnoxiously high.

I'd also say that this isn't the best points sale promotion by IHG, seeing as it is that there have been offers with 100% bonuses. I'd therefore probably wait for a better deal to come along.