I have read quite a bit over that last month or so about the IHG and Mastercard Pricless Surprises promotion, and how you are able to join it without ever staying at a IHG property, well I finally took the bait!
I went out and bought all the items needed and have nearly half finished and already mailed, but I did go ahead and stay my first night in a Holiday Inn in years last night in nearby Oklahoma City. I decided I would do both the mail in, and some stays. Upon logging into to my very dusty IHG account I also noticed another promotion, the Accelerate Promotion , which the way I understand it is a tailored promo and everyone has a different one. Mine was to complete like 5 things and get 35,000 bonus miles. My stay last night I purchased the bonus points option (which apparently count towards IHG Status) , so for about Twenty bucks extra I got 5,000 extra elite qualifying points. All said in done, with these two promos (the sweepstakes and the Accelerate) and a few stays added in with bonus points I will have well over 100,000 IHG miles, and that of course depends on how much I win on the mail in sweepstakes part, I hear its a minimum of 47,000 give or take. Not bad for basically a few hundred bucks and some time (give or take $50 for sweepstakes and a few $100 stays with extra points) and one could have at least 2 nights at a top IHG property, which in the end could be a very good return on investment.
I haven’t decided to jump in full blast yet as I do not care for many IHG properties, I am , until or if anything drastic changes, a VERY LOYAL SPG person and I will work very hard to re-qualify for at least 50+ night Platinum as I did last year, but I never like to turn down a good deal. So as of now no IHG credit card and no multiple stays, but I would like status and apparently one can do it with points alone, but I need to look into this further before commenting more, so stay tuned..
I will keep you posted as I start getting emails back from the MasterCard Sweeps and let you know how many points I am getting.
