UPDATE: IHG APPEARS TO ONLY BE OFFERING 10,000 MILES, NOT 50,000 – though I do think that you could make an argument based on the terms and conditions

The new IHG “Into the Nights” promotion that came out yesterday has been all the rage in the blogosphere the past day or so.  Similar to the Big Win promotions that they ran twice last year, each member is given a subset of 5-7 “tasks” that you have to do, and if you do all (or most) of them, you get a larger bonus amount.

I wrote 2 posts about it yesterday:

• New IHG promotion – “Into the Nights” – up to 50,000+ points or 2 free nights
• Update on IHG’s Into the Night – my offer(s): 86,500 points for 3 stays?

If you don’t like reading me (and if so, why not?!!?), there were also points from Mommy Points, Loyalty Lobby, Muslim Travel Girl, or the InsideFlyer blog.

The Into the Nights Terms and Conditions

So I am not tracking the terms and conditions of every hotel and airline (like Gary from View from the Wing), and I am not a lawyer.

But I do plan on staying on a few Holiday Inn Expresses over the next few months!! 😀

So I was reading through the terms and conditions of the Into the Nights promotion, and a few things jumped out at me.

(emphasis mine)

Some minor things

• You can make stays from September 1 through December 31 (both dates inclusive)
• It says that you must “claim” the reward within 60 days after the completion of the promotion (so March 1), but that’s not 100% clear to me if that means you have to just ELECT to take your free nights by then, or if you actually have to USE your free night certificates by then.
• Reward nights don’t count for this promotion, and you only get 1 stay credit no matter how many rooms or nights you’re there (should be obvious)

Can you get airline miles?

The one that really jumped out at me though was the potential ability to get airline miles?  The list of participating airlines for the promotion is:

• United Airlines
• American Airlines
• US Airways
• Delta Air Lines
• Alaska Airlines
• Aeromexico
• Avianca/TACA Airlines (LifeMiles)
• GOL
• Hawaiian Airlines
• JetBlue Airways

It certainly seems according to the posted terms and conditions that if you have your preferences set to earn airline miles, you might be able to choose 25,000 Airline miles rather than 25,000 IHG points as your big bonus.

If you’re not familiar with it, generally speaking, at IHG (and other hotel chains I believe as well), you can choose to earn airline miles rather than IHG points

50,000 miles, or 10,000?

So I think it goes without saying that 50,000 airline miles would generally be considered more valuable than 50,000 IHG points.  Mile and point valuations are hard to do and quite subjective, buy you can regularly “buy” IHG points at 0.7 cents / point through the Cash and Points “trick”, so that would seem to be the upper bound of their value.  Most people value airline miles anywhere from 1.6-2.2 cents a point, or around 3 times as valuable.

Normally speaking the conversion between IHG points and airline miles is not a 1:1 conversion though – from what I was reading in the regular IHG Rewards T&C, it looks like 50,000 IHG points normally only transfers to 10,000 airline miles.  That would make it NOT a great deal (as is typically the case with program to program transfers)

If I go to the “My offers” section of the IHG Rewards site, I am listed with

So that would seem to indicate that the INTENTION of the promotion is 10,000 airline miles and not 50,000.  Still, I think the posted terms and conditions might give you a leg to stand on if you wanted to try and press the issue.

What do you think?  Are you going to try and collect the airline miles, or just stick with the IHG points?  Or is your offer so bad that you wouldn’t bother either way?

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