Tag: IHG Rewards Club Mastercard

How We Found A Reasonable Rate At A NYC Chain Hotel That Had No Resort Fee

Finding hotel rooms in Manhattan is always a challenge. The sheer number of options available could easily cause travelers to throw up their hands and roll the dice, taking whatever hotel Priceline picks for them. We’re not that type of traveler. We need to know the hotel we’re staying at, check to see if the hotel gets good reviews and still get to stay there at what we consider to be a reasonable price.

people across on intersection
Photo by Vlad Alexandru Popa on Pexels.com

For each trip, there are different factors that give me a hint of where to start looking. For this stay, we were going for four nights. If it was a five-night stay, I’d look at Marriott or Hilton properties because you get the fifth night free on reward stays. If I had the IHG Premier, I could look at one of their hotels since they offer a fourth night free on reward stays, but we’re keeping our Select versions of the IHG cards for now.

When I hear four-night hotel stay, there’s only one other thing that pops into my mind. Citi Prestige fourth-night free! All I need to do is find a hotel I like at a reasonable rate and I’ll get 25% of the room rate charges refunded. Granted, Citi doesn’t refund the taxes or any additional resort fees, so you end up saving less than 25% but still, that’s a great discount for a hotel in Manhattan. Continue reading “How We Found A Reasonable Rate At A NYC Chain Hotel That Had No Resort Fee”

Why Should You Keep A Discontinued Credit Card?

Once you’ve been getting credit cards for different sign-up bonuses and benefits for long enough, eventually one of the cards you have will be discontinued. One day the bank will stop accepting new applications for the card and you’re in credit card limbo. Most of the time banks will allow you to keep the cards open and continue to offer the same benefits as before. This can be for months, years or even decades after the card is initially ended.

The most common reason a card is discontinued is that the bank is refreshing a product and decides to relaunch the card with a new name and new benefits. However, there are sometimes where a bank just decides that the card is no longer a good fit for their portfolio. Another reason is contractual, such as when AMEX lost the Costco contract or when Citi’s Hilton agreement ended. In these instances, you’re not able to keep the old product and will either be offered a different card from the old bank or the equivalent card from the new bank.

Back to discontinued, yet still active, cards. Should you keep them? What’s the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

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IHG Delays Unannounced Changes To Free Hotel Night Pricing

I wrote at the beginning of January about how IHG’s yearly adjustment of the number of points needed to redeem a free night at close to 700 of their hotels would take effect on January 14th. Not that anyone would know because IHG doesn’t announce these changes any more than publishing the list of hotels changing in value to the Priority Club website.

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Act Fast – You Only Have One Week Before These Hotels Will Cost More Points

For the past several years, IHG has made changes to the number of points needed to redeem a free night at their hotels just after the beginning of the new year. While they do publish the list on the IHG Rewards Club website, they don’t make an announcement to members about when the changes will take effect. Thanks to those people who scour the internet to find out this information, we now know the changes (mostly increases) will take effect on January 14, 2019.

It’s important to remember that as long as you make your reservation before that date, you can book rooms at the current rate so this would be a good time to lock in those reservations if the hotel you are looking at is going up in price. There’s not much downside to booking even if you’re not sure about the trip, since you usually can cancel points bookings at IHG hotels with no penalty, but you should always look at the cancellation policy before making any booking (points or cash).

Here’s the breakdown of the changes:

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