Use IHG Points + Free Night Certificates at ALL Kimpton Hotels!

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While it was announced back in 2014 that IHG was taking over Kimpton, it took quite some time for their loyalty programs to be integrated. This past Fall you were able to use your IHG points at a handful of Kimpton properties, but not all. Well, fortunately, as of yesterday, you can now book ALL Kimpton hotels through the IHG website. This means you can use your IHG points and IHG Free Night Certificates (earned through the IHG credit card or Accelerate promotions) at Kimpton properties! This is a huge win for IHG members!There is no direct award chart, so you’ll have to check each property individually to see how many points are required. It does, however, seem that most properties are on the higher end of the IHG scale requiring anywhere between 40,000 to 70,000 points for a free night. Depending on the property and time of year, using points might not be worth it, but you’ll have to see for your specific reservation. I am personally more excited that I can use my free night certificate from my IHG credit card at these properties! I wrote more about the credit card free night below.

You can check out all of the Kimpton properties here, but the few that I am the most excited about include:

Kimpton Seafire Resort and SpaÂ – in Grand Cayan right on Seven Mile Beach
Kimpton Shorebreak HotelÂ – right in Huntington Beach
Kimpton Taconic HotelÂ – in Manchester, Vermont close to many ski mountains including Stratton and Bromley
Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel -Â beach front hotel right in Miami
Kimpton Canary HotelÂ – right in downtown Santa Barbara
Kimpton GoodlandÂ – in Goleta, a surf town right near Santa Barbara
Kimpton Amara Resort and SpaÂ – in the heart of Sedona
Kimpton Vero Beach Hotel and SpaÂ – ocean front hotel right on Vero Beach

And if you prefer to visit big cities, there are plenty of Kimpton options in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Free Night with the IHG Credit Card

The absolutely bestÂ perk of the IHG Rewards Club SelectÂ credit cardÂ is that you receive a free night EVERY SINGLE YEARÂ that can be used at ANY IHG hotel – and now Kimpton hotel! While there are other credit cards that give you a free night annually (i.e., Marriott and Hyatt), the free night earned from theÂ IHG card is the only one where there are absolutely no restrictions on where it can be redeemed – the price and category of the hotel does not matter! But they do have capacity restrictions.

In theory though, you really are paying $49 for this free night as this is the annual fee of the credit card. This is not a card I would use for every day spend, but a card Iâ€™d keep in my sock draw solely for the free night. As always though, it is only worth it if you will be able to utilize the free night on an annual basis. While using it at an expensive hotel is ideal (i.e., Bora Bora, Paris, Grand Cayman, New York City), as long as you get $49+ value out of the free night that you would otherwise be paying for you are breaking even at the minimum.

The free night will hit your account on your FIRST anniversary date. So if you were to apply and get approved for the card today (January 2018), for example, the free night will be deposited to your account next January 2019. Since it hits your account on a yearly basis, I always recommend couples to apply for the card at the same time so they have 2 free nights to use a year and the dates will sync up.

Once the free night is deposited to your account, you have an entire year toÂ BOOK the free night reservation, but you do not actually need to stay by that expiration date. That means you actually have TWO YEARS to use the free night. The one thing to note though, is that if you cancel a free night reservation after the free night expires, you cannot redeem it for another hotel stay. That means you can skip a year using your free night and use two in one year allowing you to get an extended stay!

Here are some prior posts that discuss the IHG credit card:

Learn more about hotel credit cards here!

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