IHG One Rewards has launched another “flash sale” for buying points at a discount. This round will last until August 8, 2022.

Most members seem to have received the 100% bonus offer. The bonus applies to purchases of 11,000 points or more. However, for the best deal you will want to buy at least 26,000 points (pre-bonus).

The regular price of IHG points is 1 cent each, whenever you buy at least 26,000 points in a single transaction. You can buy a maximum of 250,000 points pre-bonus. As a result, you can buy 52,000-500,000 points and pay 0.5 cents per point.

Is it Worth It?

I certainly would NOT recommend that you buy points speculatively. However, I do like to keep a reasonable balance of IHG points handy, if only because their award pricing algorithm sometimes comes up with excellent bargains…

It’s not as easy as it was years ago – but you can definitely find many hotels where you will save money by buying points at the 0.5 cent price, instead of simply paying the cash price. This is especially true if you hold the IHG Rewards Club Premier card from Chase, where you get the 4th night free when booking award stays using points. And with IHG Rewards seemingly planning to offer regular 20%-off promotions on award stays, you definitely want to have enough points in your account to take advantage.

Of course, you also need to take into account the fact that you can earn substantial number of points on paid stays, especially when a good promotion is running.

Don’t Forget Cashback

I haven’t provided a direct link to the promotion because IHG sells its points through Points.com, which is a merchant on Topcashback. At the moment, you can earn an additional 2% cashback via routing yourself via Topcashback.com before buying points.

If you are not yet a member of Topcashback, you can earn an additional $10. Simply sign up using this referral link – https://www.topcashback.com/ref/craigsowerby – and earn $10 of cashback. With a 2% cashback rate on buying points from IHG, you would trigger the $10 cashback (and $10 bonus) by spending $500 on IHG points…