IHG Rewards Club released its 2016 award category changes and I already wrote (access here) about the introduction of two new award categories of 55,000 and 60,000 points.
We just compiled a PDF to illustrate the changes. 200 hotels soon require 5,000 to 10,000 more points per night and 200 hotels 5,000 to 10,000 less.
You can access IHG’s web page for these changes here.
READ MORE: IHG Reward Club Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
Here are the changes:
The hotels that now require more points are in RED and those requiring less in GREEN.
Conclusion
It is easy to see from the PDF which cities are hit the most. It is ugly for those that redeem points in London, Paris, Hong Kong, New York and the greater San Francisco area. All red.
Not really a surprise that number of points for redemption in many hotels in Mainland China is going down. Hotels there have both occupancy and revenue issues. There are few hotels in Brazil that soon require fewer points. Brazil is also having huge economic issues right now and the currency has crashed.
Several hotels in India and Indonesia also see their point requirements going down.
Although IHG Rewards Club has wisely decided to have the same number of properties moving up and down, you can bet that those hotels where people actually wan to redeem are steadily moving higher in point requirements.
It makes sense to use the points that you earn roughly at the same speed you earn them. The value of airline miles and hotel points is devalued steadily.
