IHG One Rewards Premier Card Review: 165,000 Bonus Points Limited-Time Offer

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New limited-time offer. The IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card is the IHG hotel co-branded card that includes special IHG perks like a free night award every year you keep the card, Elite status, and every 4th award night free. Here are the highlights:

  • 165,000 Bonus IHG Points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
  • Free Award Night after each account anniversary year at eligible IHG hotels worldwide. Valid at IHG Hotels with a current point redemption cap of 40,000 points. NEW: You can now also pay the difference over 40,000 points to redeem your Anniversary Night at hotels above the 40,000 point redemption level.
  • 4th Award Night Free. Enjoy a free reward night when you redeem points for a consecutive four-night IHG(R) hotel stay. That means if you use points to pay for 3 nights in a row, the 4th night is free. You can even book 8 award nights total and get two of them free, and so on. Works on any award level.
  • Earn up to 26 total points per $1 spent when you stay at IHG Hotels & Resorts.
  • Earn 5 points per $1 spent on purchases on travel, at gas stations, and restaurants. Earn 3 points per $1 spent on all other purchases.
  • Automatic Platinum Elite status included as a Premier card member. IHG points also don’t expire when you are an Elite member.
  • Global Entry, TSA PreCheck® or NEXUS statement credit of up to $100 every 4 years as reimbursement for the application fee charged to your card.
  • No foreign transaction fees.
  • IHG One Rewards Bonus points are redeemable at Hotels & Resorts such as InterContinental®, Crowne Plaza®, Kimpton®, EVEN® Hotels, Indigo® Hotels & Holiday Inn®.
  • $99 annual fee.

Please note the following:

This product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of this credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of this credit card who received a new cardmember bonus for this credit card within the last 24 months.

What can you get with IHG points? The best redemption value for IHG points is for free hotel nights. The other options offer significantly less value. While the points don’t translate directly to a dollar value, but overall a conservation valuation is 0.50 cents of value per point, which would make 140,000 IHG points worth an estimated $700 value. You can perform the calculations for hotels that fit your needs. I tried a bunch of other various combinations and got between 0.5 cents and 0.8 cents per point equivalent value.

(IHG points are worth less than other points like Hyatt or Chase Ultimate Rewards points, but you get a lot more of them with this bonus!)

IHG stands for Intercontinental Hotel Group which has over 5,000 hotels including the following brands:

  • Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts
  • Crowne Plaza
  • Kimpton
  • Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express
  • Staybridge Suites
  • Candlewood Suites
  • Hotel Indigo
  • EVEN Hotels

Fourth Reward Night Free

The 4th Reward night free perk can be very valuable and nice to see on a card with no annual fee. You get the fourth reward night free when you redeem points for a consecutive four-night IHG hotel stay (only pay for 3 nights with points). It showed up automatically for me when booking with points online.

For each standard room Reward Night stay of 4 or more nights, every 4th night is free. Applies only to 4 or more consecutive nights within the same Reward Night point redemption room stay at the same property. With this benefit, eligible members will be charged the Reward Night point redemption rate for the first 3 nights, and 0 points for the 4th night of the stay, as applicable. Members can utilize the 4th Reward Night Free benefit on an unlimited number of stays annually.

IHG points expire after 24 months of inactivity, so if you keep up your activity then you can save up these free nights for later. Chase Ultimate Rewards points also convert to IHG points.

Total of 26X points per $1 spent when you stay at IHG. Here’s how this breaks down: Earn 10X points from IHG® for being an IHG One Rewards Member + 10X points with this card + 6X points from IHG® with Platinum Elite Status with Platinum Elite Status (a benefit of this card) = total of 26X points total at 5,400+ IHG® hotels & resorts.

The rewards on other purchases has improved to the following:

  • 5X IHG points per $1 spent at gas stations, dining, and travel (including hotels).
  • 3X IHG point per $1 spent on all other card purchases

I would keep this card if you can use the anniversary night certificate with the 40,000 point maximum value. You should be able to get $99 value out of it as long as you need a hotel night. Stay must be completed within 12 months from date of issue.

Don’t want a card with an annual fee? The no-annual fee Traveler version has a very competitive bonus right now.

Bottom line. The IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card includes special IHG perks like a free night award every year you keep the card, Elite status, and every 4th award night free. As with most of these co-branded cards, the best value is obtained if you can redeem for IHG hotel nights.

Also see: Top 10 Best Credit Card Bonus Offers.

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Comments

  1. It looks like they removed the Select version and replaced it with the higher end Premier and a lower Traveler versions. Premier has 100k bonus points, free annual night and $89 fee. Traveler has 60k points, $29 fee but no annual free night. The previous Select had benefits and cost in between. The fee is more like $49 but got the free night.

    I’ve had the Select version of the card and its been a very good card. For my needs I can usually get a $100-150 hotel room for 15k-25k points. So yes I agree with the 0.6 value of points. Also that free annual night is worth the annual fee if you can use it for a more expensive room. I got a ~$300 room this summer for that.

  2. It appears that IHG May be discontinuing the Point Breaks program.

    https://thepointsguy.com/news/ihg-pointbreaks-discontinued/

    • Thanks for the heads up. I’ve never had the flexibility to use a PointsBreak redemption, but they did seem like a great deal at 5k. For IHG’s part, they were probably rooms that they knew were going completely empty anyway, so not sure why they wouldn’t at least keep some around.

  3. Do you have to redeem for travel can I redeem for something like gift cards, or more traditional purchases?

    • You can buy gift cards with the points, the rate I see is 25k points for a $50 gift card. that is a pretty poor value versus using the points for hotels.

  4. Douglas Fitzgerald says

    How many cards do you usually get in a given year? Also, how many bank accounts do you open? Will it hurt me to open a bunch of new bank accounts for the bonuses?

    • The specific number varies from year to year and depends on the quality of offers, but in the current environment my wife and I split things up so one person gets Chase offers (limited to 5 every 24 months) and the other person gets the other offers from Citibank, Barclaycard, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One (up to 6 a year or so). I also open several bank bonuses a year depending on offer quality, and as long as they don’t check your credit score (hard credit pull), I’ve never really had a problem with quantity.

  5. Ann Kress says

    It looks like the points offer is now 125,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months. Is it still worth it or should I wait for another better offer?

  6. It appears this card is no longer available from Chase. There is no link on chase to apply for these cards. Might have become too popular?

  7. I don’t agree that you can get this offer if you still have the old IHG select. This line: “This product is available to you if you do not have a current IHG® Rewards Credit Card and have not received a new Cardmember bonus within the last 24 months”.

    • I tried to apply with the select version of the card and received the same denial you stated. So don’t bother if you are keeping the old select card

  8. The reward system has changed a bit.

    Travel purchases other IHG hotel stays can earn 5 points/dollar.

    For example, we booked a Nile river cruise and got 5 points per dollar.

  9. This card also has other features like extended warranty of one year.

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