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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.

explore with confidence

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.

q2 2017 ihg accelerate

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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