Back in October IHG finally started integrating Mr & Mrs Smith hotels into their booking system. The process takes time, but it looks like a decent number of Mr & Mrs Smith properties are already on board.

You could view the hotel directory here. Remember that not all 1000+ Mr & Mrs Smith hotels are participating – only around 400 of them have signed up to IHG so far, although the number might increase in the future.

From what I can tell, IHG has specifically handpicked cities or locations where it’s got no or very weak footprint. Take the UK as an example, you barely see any big city on the list apart from London, where there are nine properties.

On the other hand, Cornwall has six properties, including St Mawes Hotel and Driftwood:

And Cotswold has also got five properties, including Cowley Manor and the Rectory Hotel:

Which is great news, as hotel chains are almost non-existent in such areas. Bare in mind though that you could only book the Best Flexible Rates via IHG, which could be significantly more expensive than booking direct or via other channels.

Prior to the introduction of dynamic pricing recently, we know that IHG had fixed award prices for each individual hotel, which started at 10,000 points. There were also regular Pointbreaks promotion where award night redemption was reduced to as low as 5,000 points.

With dynamic pricing in place, this is no longer the case and Pointbreaks has become a page in the history book. Interestingly, as a side effect it appears that the 10,000-point floor has also been broken.

Here are some examples in China. Holiday Inn Express Kaifeng City Center costs only 5,000 points per night, whereas the best flexible rate is around £34:

Holiday Inn Express Zhangjiakou Park View:

Holiday Inn Express Foshan Nanhai:

Unsurprisingly these are all the select-service Holiday Inn Express hotels, and hotels in Asia tend to be cheaper than the rest of the world. It’s good to see the dynamic pricing doesn’t only go upwards anyway, and hopefully we’ll see more of such in the future.

I’ve written about the IHG Ambassador programme and highly recommend you to join even if you stay at InterContinental hotels just once. When it comes to renewal, you used to have two options:

• Pay 40,000 points
• Pay $200, get 15,000 points and 10% rebate on award stays for a year (max rebate 100k points)

It was a no-brainer to go for option 2. Back in February though, when I was going to renew I found the 10% rebate message missing:

You should be able to see your options here too if your membership is due to expire in the next two months. I wasn’t sure what’s happening so sent a request to the Ambassador service team. One representative confirmed that I was still eligible, and the missing message was simply a glitch. I was rest assured and went ahead with the renewal.

Eight months have passed, and all of sudden there are some discussions about the termination of this benefit again on Flyertalk. Also I noticed that none of my stays have had the rebate posted (it was very slow in previous years too) so made a claim using IHG’s contact form.

The response I got is as follows:

I’d like to share with you on the other hand that the 10% rebate for Reward Night stay benefit has already been discontinued for Ambassador renewals made on 13 Feb 2020. In this regard, I’m so sorry to inform that your below stay will no longer be eligible for this benefit.

Amusingly, it’s the same representative who confirmed my eligibility for the rebate in February. Without question I replied quoting the original response, as I believe I have enough reason to insist on the rebate.

Another representative (supposedly the manager) replied promptly, apologised again and offered 10,000 points as a one-time compensation. Given that my rebate due is already in this range, and I have award stays planned in the next few months, I asked for another 10,000 points which was granted – not a shabby result!

It’s absolutely a shame to see this benefit go – in fact I deem it one of the most important benefits offered by the Ambassador membership, as it doesn’t require staying at InterContinental hotels. And it’s a bit dodgy of IHG not to give proper notice or public announcement on its removal, although it was implied on the renewal page.

So if you are wondering when your Ambassador rebate will land in your IHG account, it wouldn’t. The scheme is still quite decent, and I’ll probably continue renewing in the future, but I’ll think twice before picking my payment option.