IHG Priority Club Reward Night Changes & Promotion Update

InterContinental Hotels Group is really revamping their Priority Club program in 2013 with both positive and negative changes. We have already seen the news about the changes to Points Earning and that all points will no longer count towards Elite Status, we've seen enhanced Elite Benefits to members in China (hopefully something will be rolled out globally) and now there are changes to the reward nights offered from Priority Club. I outline the changes below plus I also give you an update on Priority Club bonuses as I know that is what many of you visit our main Priority Club page for.

Reward Night Changes
It hasn't been too long since InterContinental Hotel's Group Priority Club made some changes to their free night reward charts and as of January 18 of this year further changes are coming. Gone will be the redemption rates based on brand as the reward chart moves to a category format like most of Priority Club's competition. The actual min and max redemption amounts haven't changed as they range from 10,000 points for Category 1 to 50,000 points for Category 9. Priority Club is set to release the hotel list by category on January 9th and according to the director of Priority Club rewards about 30% of hotels will move down in points requirements while another 30% will move up. So when this list comes out and you see that a hotel you want to redeem for is moving up you can still redeem at the old rates until March 18 (only by calling in) and if the hotel is moving down I would hold off until the 18th to redeem for it. More details can be found here.

Here is a letter explaining the changes from IHG as pulled from the Priority Club community forum:

Bonus Offer Changes
Many of you were disappointed when Priority Club didn't run a systemwide promotion for Q4 (don't confuse the loosely targeted Stay X Get Y promos as those are not their true systemwide promos) and the lack of one for 2013 yet! I can give you the following update on Priority Club's plans for 2013:

Now that we are into 2013 the latest set of those Stay X Get Y promos, also known as the Stay More Earn More targeted bonuses are out and as you have probably seen they have been changed slightly to add additional bonuses over an above to base Stay X nights. IHG has told me there will be further changes to the promotions they run. Their next true systemwide promotion should be out later this month for the U.S. and Canada but is already being rolled out in other countries (I thought I found one yesterday but that is a systemwide bonus for new members only). The systemwide promotions will be different from their past promotions as there will be different iterations depending on the member and a number of other variables (think Marriott Rewards MegaBonus). It also looks that there will only be 3 systemwide promos for 2013 (as in 2012) but as with all loyalty programs that can change at anytime based on market conditions and what the competition is doing.

Hopefully my little update here will help the vast number of Priority Club members using FFB to gauge what they want to do with program in 2013. As always keep checking the FFB Blog and my Priority Club Bonus page for any further updates or news on the Priority Club program.