IHG seems to continually reuse (abuse?) the same name for their ever-present quarterly promotion: Accelerate. The Q2 2017 promotion has just been released (SEE: IHG Accelerate Q2 2017 promotion is available – what are your offers?). I had a few issues initially logging on, but today it finally worked for me. Only to be disappointed.
In at least a few previous quarters, I have managed to maximize my IHG accelerate offer through a combination of carefully chosen paid stays. Work stays have often helped as well. I’ve maximized Q1 2016, Q3 2016, and Q1 2017.
Generally, my past offers have been good. For Q1 2017 accelerate, for example, I had an offer where I could get the bulk of the bonus (over 30,000 points) via one paid stay. I actually botched this by paying for my one planned stay with my CSR (at least the travel credit kicked in) rather than my IHG card (as I needed to). But I was later able to recover the rest of the points with a work stay.
For IHG accelerate Q2 2017, both my wife and I have…less-than-ideal offers. Mine allows for a small take for a single paid night in a select location, but its not too useful beyond that. My wife’s offer is even crappier and I’ve pretty much written it off. Both our offers have a major hurdle to completing the full bonus.
Hurdle #1 – Maximize by staying outside the U.S.
My offer has lots of line items, some of which can be stacked in a single stay to earn roughly 10,000 points. Not fantastic, but not shabby for a single paid night.
Beyond that, it’s pretty useless. The main hurdle is the “Explore with Confidence” offer which requires a stay basically anywhere except the Americas. I can tell you pretty firmly that isn’t happening.
Since I also have the “Stay 5 nights” offer, and the achievement bonus requires all but one offer be completed, maximizing IHG accelerate is pretty much a closed door this quarter. I’m still split on whether I’ll try to make 1 night lucrative.
Hurdle #2 – Stay at two Intercontinental hotels
My wife’s offer is pretty much off the table. The biggest issue is that the bulk of the points are awarded by completing stays at Intercontinental hotels. We’ve stayed one paid night at an Intercontinental ever, and it was an amazingly low $168 in San Francisco at the Mark Hopkins.
Two paid Intercontinental nights for the promo? And/or five other paid nights? #nothappening
Conclusion
I hope your offers are better than ours. After having a few quarters with stellar offers (and clearing about 200k IHG points in 2016), I am a bit bummed about accelerate for Q2 2017. Come on, IHG, can’t you keep feeding us tons of bonus points?!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I saw them once, but now I can’t even find the **** things.
With two one-night stays at an IC, you earn 42,000 points. I really don’t think that’s too bad a deal.
If we had a cheap(er) one nearby, that might make sense for us. However, the only ones around are in SF, and prices are pretty high. I could totally see that offer making sense for other people, though.
I know I’ve been a bit spoiled getting three previous offers where 1 or 2 cheap stays let you take home nearly all the points.
I mean, do you not…travel? This runs the entire summer.
We do, lately every month. I just tend to *use* points when earning doesn’t make sense. We’re slowly becoming richer with points and poorer on time.
I’ll probably end up pulling in small take from 1 night by stacking a few of the 1-2k goals from my offer. My hope is work will step in and require a trip to let me maximize the rest.
Last quarter I was able to earn most of the Accelerate point offers for the first time since I joined the IHG program. I might be able to pull off one night of work stay for 11k points this quarter, but maximizing my points is also out of the question. I’d rather take advantage of Hilton’s double points offer and work toward my Citi Hilton card’s 10k for $1k spending bonus until the end of August.
You’re cheap son of a gun who has nothing of value to add. What a waste of the planet’s resource.
You should visit Cleveland! We have two InterContinental hotels that each only cost about $130/night.
I have to just say that I honestly didn’t believe you! Cleveland seems like a pretty random place to have not 1 but *2* Intercontinental hotels. And the rates are good, like you say!
So you’re complaining that you wont be getting paid to stay in a hotel essentially? That’s pretty pathetic, not the promo itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for getting some free points but calling this set of goals pathetic sounds a bit entitled.
Good luck on meeting your goals despite the hurdles … too bad they have gotten crappier!
i am not seeing anything when i log into my account. how do you access the promo?
I would rather fill out 3 by 5 index cards and wait for the entries and points to appear in my email. Or play prizelogic where you watched a short video each day to be entered into a weekly drawing. That happy ending came with 60k ihg points.
Completely agree
Having had a few Accelerator
programs with over 100K points this one of 30K is hardly worth doing
Give it a miss in favour of Hiltons Triple points.
There are Inter Hotels in Europe under $100 on certain dates.
How about the IC Milwaukee this June/July? Perhaps during Summerfest, a music festival! (If the IC is not sold out.) Also, I was born & raised about 75 miles from DT Cleveland and I find it surprising that both ICs are in the neighborhood of the Cleveland Clinic and another major hospital to service patients, their families, and visiting doctors.