IHG 8,500 points targeted bonus for app bookings
IHG has a new targeted offer to encourage members to use its new One Rewards app.
You can check if you are eligible here. I suspect that it’s only for non- or light users of the app, so if you’ve made recent app bookings like me you are unlikely to qualify.
If you do, the offer terms are as follows:
- Book via the IHG app and stay by August 16
- Earn 2,000 bonus points on your first stay
- Earn 6,000 bonus points on your second stay
The offer actually has a slightly different variant, of which the sign-up page is here. It offers an additional 500 bonus points for downloading and signing in on the app, which presumably is only intended for those who’ve never had the IHG app previously.
Note that only paid stays count. Remember that IHG is also running a quadruple points offer this quarter on which you can double dip.
IHG One Rewards now live with breakfast benefit and milestone rewards
Back in June IHG announced the details of its new One Rewards program and it’s coming soon in “early June”. They didn’t further clarify the starting date, but it looks like the new program is already rolling out.
The biggest concern of many is the free breakfast for Diamond Elites. From the discussions on Flyertalk it’s pretty clear that most, if not all IHG hotels have opted to offer it as a welcome amenity since either June 1st or June 8th. If any hotel is still playing the game and refusing to offer it, I suggest you file a complaint.
On the other hand, you can now check and select the Milestone Rewards.
Provided that you’ve stayed at least 20 nights this year, you can choose your first reward between bonus points, F&B voucher and the suite upgrade voucher.
From what we’ve gathered so far, you have three months to choose it after qualification, and then the F&B voucher or suite upgrade voucher are valid for 365 days. Note that the F&B voucher isn’t redeemable yet, and the suite upgrade voucher is quite restricted, as it can’t be applied to reward or prepaid bookings.
If you’ve hit 40 nights this year already, you’ll soon be able to select the annual lounge membership, which entitles you to lounge access at all IHG brands including Regent and InterContinental hotels.
Marriott selling points with a mystery bonus
Marriott is having another bonus offer if you are interested in buying some points.
You need to check your targeted offer here. The promotion ends July 15th, and you’ll earn a mystery bonus when buying at least 2,000 points.
From what I’ve gathered so far there are three possible offers:
- 35% bonus (26% discount), the effective price is $92.6 / £72.4 per 10K points
- 45% bonus (31% discount), the effective price is $86.2 / £69.1 per 10K points
- 55% bonus (35% discount), the effective price is $80.6 / £64.6 per 10K points
60% bonus is as far as Marriott has ever gone to, so it’s worth considering if you are targeted for the 55% bonus.
My review of Cliveden House, A Mr & Mrs Smith Hotel
Its partnership with Mr and Mrs Smith adds a lot of excellent hotels to IHG’s portfolio. IHG members enjoy Smith Extras when staying with them, which usually means a bottle of Champagne, a box of chocolate or sometimes free breakfast. Ambassador members are also entitled to GoldSmith benefits, which includes space-available room upgrade and potentially enhanced Smith Extras.
You can redeem IHG points on reward stays at Mr & Mrs Smith hotels too, at a rate of $6.2 per 1K points roughly. Even better, the free night voucher issued by the UK Creation credit card is valid on them as well, although I’m not sure if it’s a bug.
One of the best redemptions in Europe is probably The Retreat at Blue Lagoon in Iceland.
There are many outstanding choices in the UK too, and my decision went with the Cliveden House in the end simply because it’s closest to London. There are a few properties in the same league, such as Lucknam Park, Chewton Glen and Heckfield Place.
IHG paid £1,200 for the night.
Cliveden House is at the centre of the Cliveden National Trust, which is about one hour’s drive from central London. Hotel guests need to pay £18 per person as a result, unless you have a valid National Trust membership.
The only other similar property that I’ve ever stayed at is the Langley, a Luxury Collection hotel. In terms of the neighbourhood Cliveden House wins hands down. Langley is only a local park which isn’t well taken care of, whereas Cliveden is a very well maintained National Trust site and probably one of the nicest parks you can find near London.
A beautiful boulevard leads you to the house.
There are a huge lawn and mazes at the back of the house. You can follow the steps down to River Thames.
Cliveden House was built in the 17th century by Duke of Buckingham as a hunting lodge for his mistress and guests. It was bought by William Waldorf Astor in the 19th century, and you can still see the name Astor in many places.
Meghan Markle stayed here in 2018 the night before the Royal Wedding.
The house was last renovated in 2015. It doesn’t look as new as The Langley, but ages well.
IHG’s IT system is a mystery, and I don’t know how they decide what room type you can redeem vouchers for. I was able to use mine on Deluxe Room with Hot Tub, which is only one level below the suites and almost doubles the cost of a standard room.
The room is located at the same wing as the spa centre.
Cliveden House has no room numbers, and instead rooms are named after titles. I’m Load Lothian obviously, which doesn’t sound bad at all 😉
There’s a wardrobe once I enter the room, with the bathroom to the right and bedroom to the left.
The room is nothing much to write about, except for the bed which is quite comfy. There’s a nice tub in the bathroom, but trust me you won’t need it!
Best feature of this room is a small terrace:
Plus a private hot tub:
The terrace is connected right to the swimming pool. I don’t even need to check in at the spa centre!
The facilities are great. The swimming pool is quite deep though (1.83m) and too scary for an amateur like me.
According to my observations, there are a total of four rooms with a terrace, and mine is the only one that has direct access to the swimming pool. Privacy may be one concern though.
My friend who visited the following week told me there’s actually an indoor swimming pool, and took a photo for me.
Smith Extras are a small bottle of Laurent Perrier and some chocolate / snacks. No room upgrade is offered, but to be honest I don’t really want to sacrifice my terrace for a suite 😛
For breakfast there are two options:
- Continental only: £20
- Continental + hot breakfast: £25
They’ve put some good thoughts in furnishing the restaurant, however the continental selection is very limited.
I ordered eggs benedict and porridge for my breakfast. Honestly they are mediocre at best, although £25 is a fair price for an expensive hotel like Cliveden House.
Besides the main restaurant, you can also dine at the Aston Grill or the bar.
Cliveden’s visitor centre is a short walk away, where you can get some simple food and refreshment.
Check-out time is 11am, and you can probably request a one-hour extension but no further. You are still invited to use the pool after check-out which is a nice gesture.
There’s a problem with my door, and they can only unlock the room with a special device which causes a lot of inconvenience to me. The staff are very apologetic though. Not sure if it’s related, but they didn’t charge me for the breakfast in the end.
It is truthfully a very unique experience for me and no doubt Cliveden House is the best hotel I’ve stayed at so far in the United Kingdom – although according to the staff they usually refer to is as a House rather than Hotel. I’m not sure if it’s worth paying cash here via IHG (as prices may be lower elsewhere), but if you have sufficient points or some free night vouchers to burn, I highly recommend staying here for a couple of nights.
How to redeem your Virgin Atlantic Credit Card Upgrade voucher
Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Credit Card is probably the best non-Amex traveller card in the UK, and the Tier Reward after hitting £10,000 annual spend is quite attractive. One of the rewards to choose from is an upgrade voucher, and I’ll talk about how to use it today.
[Receiving the Voucher]
First of all, you should receive the voucher within 30 days of spending the qualifying amount. You won’t receive an email or see it in your Virgin Atlantic account, but you’ll see the following row in the activity statement:
You don’t need to specifically choose from the three Tier Rewards, instead whenever you are ready you can just redeem straightaway.
[Facts]
The voucher can be used on both revenue and reward tickets. This is a big advantage over the BA upgrade voucher issued by Barclaycard.
Only Virgin Atlantic operated flights are upgradable. Economy Light tickets are non-upgradable.
The voucher can be used to upgrade a return flight or two one-way flights. You can use half of the voucher on a one-way flight and save the other half for the future.
You can upgrade one-cabin, i.e. Economy to Premium or Premium to Upper Class.
Reward availability is required in the upgraded cabin.
You need to pay the difference in taxes and charges.
The voucher cannot be redeemed online. You must call the contact centre to redeem it.
It can be applied on tickets issued by travel agencies too – you don’t have to book directly from Virgin Atlantic, which is good as they don’t have best rate guarantee.
You can redeem the voucher for someone else – you don’t have to travel.
[Calculating the charges]
To know how much you need to pay for the upgrade is easy. Say that you want to upgrade a one-way flight from London to Miami, then just search any date for that route on Virgin’s website. Select a flight and cabin then you’ll see ticket price on the next page:
See Taxes, fees and charges? It’s not the whole picture though, you must click the link to view the actual breakdown, which will show you the carrier-imposed surcharge too:
The two numbers combined are payable charges for a reward ticket. And in this case:
- Economy: £120 + £169 = £289
- Premium: £120 + £270 = £390
- Upper Class: £350 + 270 = £620
Which means you must pay £101 for upgrading from Economy to Premium, or £230 from Premium to Upper Class.
[Using the Voucher]
The first thing you need to ensure is reward availability in the cabin you want to upgrade to. Since Virgin Atlantic doesn’t guarantee reward seats on any flight, you may need to search their website often or subscribe to one of the alerting services.
Once you find it:
- For reward ticket, you don’t need an existing booking, simply call in to make the booking with points and voucher
- For revenue ticket, you don’t need any Virgin points, just call in to upgrade with the voucher
Since fuel surcharges are sky high at the moment, upgrading a revenue ticket usually turns out a much better deal.
Virgin Atlantic actually has a Gold service line which isn’t publicised on their website. However if you are a Gold member you should be able to find the 0800 number in any newsletter they sent you. I wasn’t aware and just called the regular number at 7pm on Wednesday. It took 25 minutes to get through, which wasn’t too bad.
The agent could see reward availability and my upgrade voucher no problem. She asked for my credit card details to pay the £230 charge, which is identical to my calculations above.
It’d be nice to be able to redeem the voucher online, but overall the contact centre experience was smooth and positive, and I think paying £230 for an upgrade to Upper Class, plus finally finding a use for that voucher feels really good!
I Prefer Gift Card 20% bonus sale
Like SLH or LHW, Preferred Hotels & Resorts is a soft alliance of independent hotels, but somehow of a much lower profile. You probably have heard of at least some of their hotels in the London portfolio though:
- Royal Lancaster London
- L’Oscar
- The Stafford
And there is currently a sale on their digital gift card should you be interested in staying with their properties.
- Runs until June 30
- Get 20% bonus on all I Prefer gift cards purchased
- The original gift card doesn’t expire, but the 20% bonus expires after 6 months
- Gift cards can be used at participating hotels except in China, Japan, India, the Middle East and Africa
Note that USD is the only supported currency, so exchange rate fluctuation and currency conversion are potential risks.
Read the FAQs carefully, but here’s my take:
- In principle you must be a staying guest, although you may use it to pay off incidentals too
- You don’t have to book the stay via I Prefer
- They are not valid for pre-pay
Earn voucher or Virgin points on restaurant dining via SquareMeal
We wrote about IHG’s partnership with OpenTable which allows you to earn IHG points when making restaurant reservations. It turns out that OpenTable isn’t the oligarch in the industry and SquareMeal provides a very similar service.
SquareMeal has a wide range of business operations, but we’ll just focus on the dining part today. Basically:
- You earn 100 points for each restaurant reservation
- You also earn points when dining at select restaurants and paying with linked cards
For the second perk, you can search on their website and filter by Restaurants With Reward Offers:
You need to link a debit card or credit card (Visa / Mastercard / Amex) to your SquareMeal account. If you put enough spend through the designated card at participating restaurants you’ll earn a bonus. You don’t have to reserve via SquareMeal in this case, but there aren’t many participating venues.
You can opt to earn one of the two kinds of points:
- SquareMeal Points: 100 points = £1, and the voucher can be redeemed at participating restaurants
- Virgin Points
The first option sounds better value to me, providing that the vouchers are easy to exchange and redeem. Don’t forget to weight in the 150 IHG points from OpenTable in your equation.
The following are some ways to earn points:
- Sign up with my referral link and reserve once to earn 300 points
- Add your first debit / credit card to earn 100 points
- Earn 100 points every time you reserve a restaurant
- Earn 25 points every time you write a review
Of course, you must show up to your reservation to earn the points.
My review of Aloft Birmingham Eastside
Marriott’s Every Night Counts promotion is coming to an end, and I’m participating one last time at the Aloft Birmingham Eastside hotel while visiting a friend in Solihull.
If you are looking for a central hotel IHG is your best bet. Somehow none of the Marriott hotels is ideally located. The Aloft is right next to the Aston University, and about 20 minutes’ walk into Birmingham’s New Street station.
From my limited experience, Aloft and Moxy share similar design concept of their public areas, although Moxy has more of a sexy element when it comes to guest rooms.
The hotel has a big ground floor, with a colourful bar by the entrance.
It’s not really a busy day but I didn’t receive any room upgrade. When asked about upgrade availability the receptionist told me “your room was pre-allocated this morning”, which isn’t really an answer. I didn’t bother to pursue as I just needed a bed for one night.
The room is about what you’d expect from a budget brand, basic but clean. It’s weird that Aloft usually positions itself in the four-star league, whereas in terms of quality and price it’s more on a par with Holiday Inn, Hampton or Ibis.
As a Titanium member I could choose breakfast as the welcome amenity. Breakfast is served in the Tempo restaurant, next to which is a Refuel station where you can purchase snacks.
Standard buffet:
Gym room:
Overall the hotel is okay, however unless you need to be in the area or the hotel’s rate is very good, I think there are plenty of better choices in the city.