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Earlier today, I broke the news that starting with the February 2018 IHG Point Breaks, IHG is going to be changing (enhancing? devaluing?) their popular PointBreaks program.  Instead of all the hotels on the list costing a flat 5,000 points per night, the hotels on the PointBreaks list will cost 5,000, 10,000 or 15,000 points.

I maintain a map and list of the current IHG PointBreaks  and update it every quarter.  The current IHG Point Breaks are good through the end of the month, so I’ve been getting ready to update the list when the new one comes out.

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Is there a silver lining in the Point Breaks changes?

Ian wrote in the comments on the original post

Not trying to play devil’s advocate for IHG, but in some case I might want to take an IC or a Crowne Plaza over a Holiday Inn, even if it is 10k versus 5k. Looks like they have 3 ICs on the list. Sometimes there hasn’t been one, so that is an improvement.

Which I think is a good point.  I think the devil is / will be in the details. As you mention, there are several Intercontinentals on the preview list (something that has been hard to find in recent Point Breaks), but also 7 of the 8 hotels listed were more than 5000 points. Also I’m sure the hotels on the preview list are curated carefully so as to show the “best” ones

The other thing to keep in mind is that IHG is changing Point Breaks to allow Points + Cash bookings on PointBreaks reservations, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out and what the rates will be

Analyzing the 8 hotels on the preview list

So let’s take a look at the 8 hotels that are on the preview list, with their Point Breaks total as well as the “regular”

So just in a quick glance, it does not look like there is a fixed formula for the PointBreaks amount (where a hotel’s category automatically makes it either 5, 10 or 15,000.  As you can see the Intercontinental Nairobi and the Holiday Inn  Helsinki are both 30,000 points but one is 10,000 and one is 15,000

I will do a similar analysis on the full list when it comes out either Friday or Monday – it will be interesting to see what that shows


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