IHG Rewards Club runs a quarterly promotion known as PointBreaks where award nights at select hotels start from just 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points. IHG Rewards Club is back with its new PointBreaks which runs from now until 31 August 2019. All award nights under PointBreaks promotional rates must be booked before 31 August 2019 and your stays have to be by 31 August 2019 as well.
Under PointBreaks rules, each IHG Rewards Club member is only allowed to book two PointBreaks reservations per hotel in the PointBreaks list. This rule won’t really affect you much unless you intend to return to the same property more than twice.
IHG Rewards Club has also made the PointBreaks list “live” and when a hotel runs out of PointBreaks award nights inventory, it will be removed from the list on their website.
How do I book PointBreaks rates?
PointBreaks rates, if available, are already loaded onto the hotel’s inventory and thus if the hotel is participating in the PointBreaks promotion you will be able to see the PointBreaks rate reflected. Here’s an example showing the InterContinental Kuala Lumpur showing that it still has rooms on the PointBreaks rate.
Rooms booked with points under the PointBreak rates are subjected to the same cancellation policies as rooms booked with points on normal rates. You will be able to cancel your bookings with no penalty up to 24 hours prior to check in. This policy might vary between properties so make sure you read the fine print when performing a PointBreak booking at the hotel’s website just to be sure of its exact cancellation policy. You are also able to book PointBreaks hotels using Cash + Points and since there are no active points sale now, this will be your best option to top-up the points needed to secure a PointBreaks booking.
Do bear in mind that IHG is also currently running a Global Sale promotion where you are able to get up to 20% off room rates. So do check that out to see if that suits you better than redeeming points.
What’s good in this PointBreaks?
Frankly, there’s nothing that pops out at me in this edition of PointBreaks. There is the InterContinental Kuala Lumpur which is available for 15,000 IHG Rewards Club points a night but you might be able to get more value by booking a revenue rate instead.
If you are planning a holiday to the United Kingdom and your travel dates fall between now and 31 August 2019, you’re in luck as there are plenty of hotels in the UK to go around. The Hotel Indigo Manchester – Victoria Station is available for 15,000 points a night which is a pretty decent deal.
IHG Rewards Points can be purchased for US 0.5 cents each during IHG’s 100% bonus sales, this will mean you will be paying an effective cost of USD75 for a night on PointBreaks. Revenue rates at this hotel prices at around USD100, a USD25 savings per night is plenty in my opinion.
Again, we see that the bulk of the 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points PointBreaks hotels are located in the United States and there are only a smattering of 5,000 points hotels around the world. As bad as this may seem, you can still get good value out of PointBreaks redemptions at 10,000 and 15,000 points rates.
Concluding Thoughts
PointBreaks now is a far cry from what they used to be when all hotels were going at a low rate of just 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points. While you can still find some decent properties such as the InterContinental Kuala Lumpur, that’s about as good as it gets in this edition of PointBreaks.
Remember that the PointBreaks list is “live” and when hotels run out of PointBreaks inventory, it will be delisted from the website. So do not be surprised to see a very short list in a few weeks time.
