Cheapest IHG hotels to earn points (Plus a trick to buy points for less!)

Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers.

Travel credit cards are far from the only way to earn miles and points.

Pre-coronavirus, hotel chains would occasionally publish fun and lucrative promotions to help you earn points and reward nights quickly. Much of them revolved around completing a certain amount of nights. A few hotel chains have begun flexing those muscles again — and hopefully, we’ll see all hotels bounce back with promotions like these in the near future.

This post is about IHG hotels. One of the best ways you can prepare for future IHG promos is with this post. You can pick up dirt cheap reward nights at oodles of hotels — though most of them aren’t anywhere near the U.S. Keep them in mind if you’re jonesing for a cheap vacation.

You can also “buy” IHG points for ~0.6 cents per point by taking advantage of a quirk with the IHG website. This isn’t a trick everyone’s comfortable using, so do what works for you.

Every IHG hotel under $50

You might not find the same hotel at the same rate. Many of the hotels were surprisingly consistent in price, but some of these hotels have way lower rates in off-peak. Like one of the hotel locations on the cheaper end in Sanya, China… But that’s a beach resort area near Vietnam, and the price ranged from $39 to $140.

Again, most do not vary that much, but the point is that this is the lowest rate we found

“We found” also means that there could be lower rates out there on dates we didn’t check. This is a good resource, but not a perfect one. These are also standard rates, and there may be even cheaper rates with whatever code you use.

It may go without saying, but each of these hotels would be terrible redemptions. If a hotel is this cheap, better to pay cash and save your points for a more expensive hotel.

Before I go over best hotels and strategies, let me start with the list of the cheapest 228 hotels, with every hotel that we found at $50 or under.

You might think this is crazy if you haven’t stayed in these hotels in China, but the average Holiday Inn in China is much nicer than the average Crowne Plaza in the U.S. By a long shot.

Maybe you’re looking for hotels at which you don’t actually want to stay, but you’re booking it solely to complete a promotion or earn elite status. We call that mattress running. You check into the hotel and just drive back home. You don’t even stay at the hotel — the promotion payoff or elite status is worth more to you than the cash you paid for the hotel nights.

If you did want to complete a promotion while also staying somewhere interesting, there are many interesting locations. My picks are:

• Chengdu – $34
• Shanghai – $47
• Moscow – $35
• Dubai – $35
• Bali – $39
• Istanbul – $37
• Bangkok – $35
• Jakarta – $18

Many of these are a distance from the city center, which is a no-go for me personally.

Map of cheapest IHG hotels

Red indicates the cheapest IHG hotels. Just like the complete map of IHG hotels, click the top right to blow it up and see the key.

IHG Points & Cash trick

IHG allows you to book award nights using a combination of points and cash. This means if you don’t have enough points for an award night (or if you don’t want to use all your points), IHG will “sell” you the remaining points you need for your stay.

Let’s look at an example to better understand. The Holiday Inn : Chennai OMR IT Expressway costs 11,000 points per night. However, it provides the following Points & Cash option:

The key is this: No matter which option you choose, you’re still paying 11,000 points per night. IHG is simply selling you the points you need to complete your stay. If you choose 6,000 points and $30, IHG will deposit 5,000 more points into your account and immediately remove the 11,000 points it needs to complete your stay. In other words, IHG sold you 6,000 points for $30. That’s a rate of 0.6 cents each.

Here comes the trick.

After you book your stay, your reservation will appear in your account as a reward stay. If you then cancel your reservation, IHG won’t refund your $30 — instead, 11,000 points will deposit into your account (the 6,000 points from your account and the 5,000 points you “purchased” with $30).

You can repeat this over and over to purchase as many IHG points as you like. Just note that the Points & Cash rates vary, and some are a poorer deal than others.

Not everyone may be comfortable using this trick to buy IHG points at a cheaper rate. If you decide to do it, always double-check you’re making a refundable reservation (take note of the cancellation deadline!).

The IHG award chart prices the vast majority of hotel nights between 10,000 and 70,000 points (though a few select hotels price even higher). With this method, you can effectively purchase hotel nights for as little as $59 per night. And you can reserve top-tier IHG hotels for around $413 per night (often the best use of IHG points). Some of these hotels can cost over $1,000 per night!

Earn IHG points quickly with the IHG Premier Card

The IHG® Rewards Premier Credit Card comes with 140,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first three months of account opening.

We estimate IHG points value to be 0.5 cents each, so you should at least get $700 from this bonus — though as discussed above, it’s possible to get much higher value if you know how to use IHG points.

The card also comes with a reward night after each account anniversary year at eligible IHG hotels worldwide (again, only valid for IHG hotels that cost 40,000 points or less). Plus, you get a fourth reward night every time you book three consecutive reward nights!

You can read our full review of the IHG credit card for all the card details.

Bottom line

You can earn IHG points in a hurry if you know what you’re doing. Be it through credit card bonuses, hotel promotions, or the IHG Points & Cash trick, IHG points are easy to pick up.

IHG hotels have variable rates, so let us know if you find a hotel with an exceptional Points & Cash value, or simply a super cheap hotel not on our list! And subscribe to our newsletter for more hotel tips and tricks like this delivered to your inbox once per day.