On May 1, 2015, IHG will be changing the categories for 450 of their hotels. Out of those hotels, 300 will be going up a category (or 2) and 150 of them will be going down a category. In my opinion, I am not too disappointed by this news 4as it only represents a little over 9% of their total hotels. The good news though is that the award chart is not changing, just a few select hotels being swapped around.
This means that you have exactly one week to book a hotel room for the 300 properties that are going up a category. These hotels will require an additional 5,000 or 10,000 points to redeem for a free night. IHG sent me the entire list of hotels changing, although they are not posting it to their website until a few days prior to the change. Unfortunately though, the PDF they sent me does not separate the properties moving up vs. moving down so you’ll need to sift through it to see if there are any hotels on your radar being affected.
I’ll make sure to remind you all next week to make any last minute reservations.
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I posted a sortable list, if you’d find it helpful – http://www.pointswithacrew.com/list-of-ihg-hotel-point-changes-released/
Most of the hotels going down are going from Cat 3 to Cat 2 or Cat 2 to Cat 1, and there are quite a few high-end properties going up 2 categories, as you mentioned.
@Dan – That is great. Thanks so much for posting!