IHG has just announced 653 of their hotels that are changing category. This was covered by several folks yesterday, including View from the Wing, One Mile at a Time, Miles to Memories, Mommy Points, Doctor of Credit, Million Mile Secrets and others. Hotels changing category is a normal part of business, and as long as there is sufficient notice, I’m okay with the process, although it is frustrating that it’s always the hotels that you actually want to stay at that go up (of course)
A brief breakdown:
- 11 hotels are going up by 15,000 points / night
- 102 hotels are going up by 10,000 points / night
- 383 hotels are going up by 5,000 points / night
- 146 hotels are going down by 5,000 points / night
- 11 hotels are going down by 10,000 points / night
I should point out that the 11 hotels that are going down by 10,000 points / night are either going from Category 3 to Category 1 (20,000 points to 10,000 points / night) or Category 5 to Category 3 (30,000 points to 20,000 points), and 10 of them are in China (and the other one is in India)
Complete map of IHG award category changes for 2017
Similar to how I do it for the IHG Point Breaks map, I find it easier to visualize this data in map form.
I colored the map based on the amount that it was changing, with reds being increases (bad) and greens being decreases (good). I tried to break it down by brand and point change, but that got to be too many different options. As you can see, there’s a lot of red (point increases) in the USA and western Europe, and a lot of green (decreases)
Sortable table of IHG 2017 category changes
Here is also a sortable that allows you to filter by brand, hotel name, city or state
You can still book the hotels at the old rate until January 15, 2017. If you have an existing reservation at a hotel that is going DOWN in points (unlikely unless you’re going to China! :-D), you can rebook it at the lower level.
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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 
Great map! Heads up, it puts the Lousiville Airport Holiday Inn about 3 blocks off of Bourbon & Canal Sts in New Orleans.
Nice map. The Columbus Indiana location is showing up in the Florida Panhandle for some odd reason.
Thanks for the post this is helpful. I have some stays coming up in Turkey so the timing is good for “that” trip but sad overall.
Is this Danin UCLA’70, USMC?
Wow this is helpful! Rather than just report on the changes like other bloggers you actually put some effort in to this which benefits your reader!
LOL thanks 🙂 I do find it much more useful to view the data like this – glad you like it! Make sure and stop by when the IHG Point Breaks list is delivered as I will create a similar map
Thanks so much for the table, but the map has a decent amount of icons in the wrong spot. On first glance:
Springdale UT HIExpress is in Springdale AR
Clarskville AR HIExpress is in Clarksville TN
Santee SC HI is in Memphis TN
Sioux Falls SD HI is in Nashville TN
Waco TX Indigo is in Tucson AZ
Goodyear AZ HI is in southern CO
San Jose CA Staybridge is also in CO
I’ve updated the map and table to address some geocoding errors. Hopefully everything should be working well now