Back in August, IHG announced its fall promotion, IHG Accelerate.  Like most of their recent promotions, IHG Accelerate gives you customized promotional offers, and completing them will give you a bonus.

Here is my set of offers:

Originally, I discounted this offer as I don’t have a ton of paid hotel stays (I prefer redeeming awards when traveling, and I don’t travel for work), but then I took a second look at things and realized that I could get a good chunk of points with only 2 stays at Holiday Inns

• Stay Once, get 1,000 points
• Change Your View – 12,000 points for staying at 2 Holiday Inn hotels
• Earn More, Faster – 3,000 points when I book 1 Bonus Points package
• Spend on your IHG Rewards Club Credit Card – 2,300 points by paying for one stay with my IHG Rewards Club credit card (with 5x at IHG hotels, why would I use anything else!?!)

I’ll skip the “Stay More, Get More” for 10,200 points, but that should complete my offer and earn me 21,500 bonus points

Doing the math, let’s say I could find 2 Holiday Inn hotels for $100 with taxes (the Bonus Points package gives 1,000 extra points for $5). That would earn me

• 18,300 points from the 4 tasks
• 21,500 points from the Achievement Bonus
• 2,000 points as my IHG Platinum welcome amenity
• 3,000 points from 10x points for staying and my Platinum 50% bonus
• 1,000 points from the spend on the IHG credit card
• Perhaps extra points from adding IHG promo codes – though we’ll have to watch out signing up for IHG promo codes

So the $200 would turn into 45,800 points, or about 0.43 cents per point.  Of course if I was able to get the 2 hotels for a lower cost, or get more points from promotional codes, that would lower the cost per point.

Booking my first Holiday Inn stay

I looked at some options for mattress running, but most of the local Holiday Inns around here were pushing $100 / night (remember I have to stay at a Holiday Inn proper, NOT a Holiday Inn Express).

Then, I remembered that I am speaking at the Family Travel for Real Life conference, which is this weekend.  (Side note: if you’re going, I’ll see you there!  And if you’re not, you’re missing out – you should definitely attend the next one)

(SEE ALSO: Recap of the Family Travel for Real Life (#FT4RL) conference!)

Since I’m speaking at the conference, my accountant says that the cost of attending the conference would be tax deductible, so that’s even more of an incentive to pay cash for the hotel, instead of “worthless” miles).  I found a Holiday Inn near Washington DC for only $79 / night.  With taxes and the extra “Bonus Points” package, my out the door total comes to $94.92.

But where to book my 2nd Holiday Inn stay?

Now it’s time to get your thoughts on my second Holiday Inn stay.  Here are my 3 options

• Option 1: Book another cheap Holiday Inn in Washington DC on the same night.  I can’t book the same Holiday Inn, but there is another hotel nearby for $79 / night, probably in the $90 range after tax.  Obviously I can’t sleep in 2 Holiday Inns at the same night, but then I could pick the “best” one 🙂
• Option 2: I have another trip planned for Phoenix / Las Vegas in November.  The Holiday Inns that I’ve seen are more expensive ($109 / night), but it would have the added benefit that, you know, I could actually SLEEP there 🙂  My other plan for this trip would be to use points to book my nights.
• Option 3: The last option would be to just mattress run something before the IHG Accelerate promotion ends

What do you think? Which of those would you go for?

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