For years IHG Rewards Club has offered the IHG PointBreaks promotion where hotels could be booked for just 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night.  There can be some great picks around here, given that sometimes you can land a 30,000 points redemption for just 5,000 points.

Lately, we have been seeing that over 90% of hotels participating in IHG PointBreaks promotion are budget brands like Holiday Inn and Candlewood Suites and it has not been very exciting.

Changes to IHG PointBreaks

Today, IHG Rewards Club has announced that they are revamping PointBreaks and will introduce three redemption tiers, while also doubling down on the number of hotels that will be offered in the promotion. Hotels are available for 5K, 10K and 15K IHG Rewards Club points in the next edition onwards of PointBreaks, which will be launched on the coming Monday. About 200 hotels will participate in this version. Hotels under PointBreaks will also be bookable with Points and Cash hereon.

IHG Rewards Club has said that they are introducing the change to be able to offer more hotels and a wider variety of brands at more locations. This would mean more choices for the customer at a discounted price.

The full preview list of PointBreaks hotels will be released later in the day, January 26, 2018, at 10:30 pm IST/12 Noon EST and will be bookable January 29, 2018, Monday onwards. IHG Rewards Club has released a teaser of the new list and here is what we can expect on offer.

• Holiday Inn Kuala Lumpur Glenmarie (Malaysia) (5,000 points)
• InterContinental Nairobi (Kenya) (10,000 points)
• Holiday Inn San Antonio Northwest (US) (10,000 points)
• InterContinental–Cali (Colombia) (10,000 points)
• Holiday Inn Express London – Newbury Park (UK) (10,000 points)
• InterContinental Sao Paolo (Brazil) (15,000 points)
• Holiday Inn Helsinki City Centre (Finland) (15,000 points)
• Crowne Plaza Berlin – Potsdamer Platz (Germany) (15,000 points)

For Better or for Worse?

I am happy that more hotels will be on offer in PointBreaks. The last edition of PointBreaks had 100 boring hotels participating, and it has been a while a good InterContinental has even made it to the list of PointBreaks hotels. This tiered pricing should be an incentive for more of the better hotels to consider participation.

We know that at least 200 hotels will participate. I imagine that there will be lesser properties available for 5,000 points a night though we will have to watch and see the mix of participating hotels when the entire list comes out.

Given that IHG changed the award prices earlier this month and introduced a higher redemption level making 9 IHG hotels charge 70,000 points per night, this looks like slightly positive news for IHG patrons. Now that PointBreaks hotels can be reserved for Points and Cash combination it further makes the offering sweet by giving members a flexible way of co-paying and saving money.

Overall I am looking forward to these changes and hoping that there will be a good mix of hotels this time. At least I am hoping to book something in this round of PointBreaks.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming changes to PointBreaks? Love them? Hate them? Don’t bother about them?