IHG Rewards Club has updated the Terms & Conditions governing the guest loyalty program effective December 1, 2016.
The change governs the issue that I have covered here on LoyaltyLobby over the past two weeks regarding the weird Member booking update-email (read more here, here, here and here).
You can access IHG Rewards Club T&Cs here.
READ MORE: IHG Rewards Club Rate & Bonus Points & Miles Promotions
Here’s the information in Chinese that was omitted from the English version:
Here’s the email sent to Ambassador members in Chinese:
Here’s an additional info included an email to IHG members in Chinese:
Here’s the terms and conditions update:
They have added an *
*If a third party beneficiary (instead of the member himself/herself who made the relevant booking) intends to check in at any Greater China properties with a Reward Night, the member must call the IHG ® Rewards Club Service Centre no less than 7 days before the Reward Night stay date. Member must provide specific personal details of such third party beneficiary as requested by IHG for its registration and validation purposes. To change any provided information, the member must follow the same procedure mentioned above. If the member fails to provide and/or change the requested information on time or the information provided is not correct for any reasons, the third party beneficiary will not be able to check in at the front desk and the relevant booking will be cancelled. The above requirement for third party beneficiary check-in applies to all Reward Night and Free Night earned through stays, points, promotions or other ways.
The Greater China (China, Macau, Hong Kong + Taiwan) award booking for others restriction is valid for members worldwide (not only for members in the area). The booking must be done minimum 7 days before of the stay and the guest information must be phoned in to the IHG Rewards Club.
IHG Rewards Club made this change on December 1, 2016 (should be valid effective January 1, 2017 per the emails to Chinese members) but website claims that these terms have been valid since August 2016.
Conclusion
Readers have commented on the previous pieces that IHG Rewards Club did this change due to widespread selling of award nights on Chinese forums.
I cannot, however, see how this change would affect that. From now on the same members will sell award nights for stays outside of Greater China (likely better points to $ value anyway) to get around this rule.
This change still has not been clearly communicated for members outside of Greater China who received the above email from IHG.
