Illogical points pricing with IHG hotel booking

[Mattg]

I just booked a night at an IHG hotel in Belgium, which was retailing for €99.



I thought I'd have a look at the options for paying with IHG One Rewards points, and was a bit bemused to find that if I contributed 5,000 points towards this booking, the co-payment would rise to €102!



I ended up selecting the flexible option with cash, and got the usual offer on the following page to purchase some extra points with my booking. Again, not much thought has been put into the pricing here!

 

[anat0l]

Was the EUR 99 rate an advance purchase rate? Just thinking if the Points+Cash is based on the Best Flexible rate rather than the best possible price you can get.

When I see something like this happen, I like to call it one of life's IQ tests.

 

[Mattg]

Was the EUR 99 rate an advance purchase rate? Just thinking if the Points+Cash is based on the Best Flexible rate rather than the best possible price you can get.

It is. The best flexible rate is EUR109 - still not a good use of points.

 

[burmans]

Personally I regard illogical pricing as a positive, it’s where you find great deals. Not all illogical prices are good but some certainly are!

 

[drron]

It is a little difficult to get good points redemptions with IHG but every now and then an illogical redemption does appear.

 

[Mattg]

It is a little difficult to get good points redemptions with IHG but every now and then an illogical redemption does appear.

Sometimes the illogicality does work in your favour!

 

[dajop]

Same thing happens with Bonvoy. Looking at a hotel the other day, near DXB airport. Very cheap right now - $45 USD/night flexible rate. Points 17,500 or points+ pay $53 + 8750 pt.

At a more upscale property, you do get some value for your points, $158 + 20.500 points or $178 for the flexible rate

 

[markis10]

Top cash back had 15% on IHG two days ago

 

[Zero]

Was the EUR 99 rate an advance purchase rate? Just thinking if the Points+Cash is based on the Best Flexible rate rather than the best possible price you can get.

When I see something like this happen, I like to call it one of life's IQ tests.

With IHG, points&cash rates are not related to the cash rates but only to the points rates.

When you book a points&cash rate, you immediately purchase the excess points needed, at a rate of around 0.6 US cents each, then make a normal award booking. You can't refund the points that you purchased in this way.

So for that hotel, if you choose 20k+€32, you pay a non-refundable USD37 to immediately purchase 5000 points. If you choose 5k+€102, you pay a non-refundable USD118 to immediately buy 20000 points. Then 25k points are used to book. If you cancel the booking, you get 25k points back.

The prices are actually in a round amount of USD. The euro equivalent is a truncated figure and misleading. The points&cash options just follow the increments specified by IHG. You could argue that IHG should implement some logic to remove any "silly" options but why would they bother?

The 25k points price is not related to the €99 or €109 cash rate, or more accurately the award price is determined by IHG in an opaque manner that has no direct link to the cash price. If there was a direct link you get a very boring program like Accor where there is no challenge to find good redemptions.

The ridiculous options for purchasing bonus elite points shown in the OP are likely to be an error on the hotel's side where they have typed some numbers incorrectly.