Ultimate Rewards is an excellent points program – the points are flexible and work with many hotel and airline programs as well as giving you the ability to redeem directly as cash, should you desire. If you want to redeem for cash, statement credits, or gift cards, you will be able to redeem at a value of 1 cent per point. That is not as good as redeeming for travel where you could realize a value of 2 cents per point or more, but it still gives you a good baseline.
Except for very rare circumstances, do not transfer points to IHG when you can buy them for .6 cents each!
But, some people recommend you transfer your Ultimate Reward points to IHG to book hotels such as the PointBreaks hotels (where it only takes 5,000 points per night). Just because you can do that does not mean that you should. The only way you should do that is if you are overflowing with Ultimate Reward points and extremely short on cash. The reason for that is because you can still buy IHG hotel points for .6 cents per point. The American Express Daily Getaway on IHG points from last week is still available and more are coming out tomorrow.
Still available!
While it is not something to really get excited about for most IHG hotels, for PointBreak hotels, it makes great sense. That works out to only paying $30 a night for a hotel that may go for over $100 on that same night. Paying only $30 for a hotel is always a great thing – especially when the hotels are as nice as they can be with the PointBreak hotels. If you were to transfer Ultimate Reward points to IHG, you would essentially be considering the value of a Ultimate Reward point to only be .6 cents – that is almost half a penny less per point than you could get if you took it as cash! That is a terrible value and terrible advice to do so! Friends don’t let friends transfer their Ultimate Reward points to IHG when you can buy them this cheap ;).
Look at the savings – 5,000 points versus spending $100!
So, with IHG points still available and more coming tomorrow, if you want to stock up on just 3 PointBreak nights worth of points, now is the time! If you pay with an American Express card, it will only cost you $90 for 3 nights – not a bad deal at all!
Thanks for a great post – I was actually thinking about doing this very thing! 🙂 Do you have to pay with an Amex to take advantage of the Daily deal?
Thanks :). No, you do not have to pay with Amex to get the deal, but paying with an Amex card will give you a 10% discount on the price.
Do these points expire? I haven’t ventured into the getaways yet. But I am thinking if it is a good deal to stock up few points for trips next year or after.
Wondering the same thing…
Nope – they never expire!
Ah. Have to weigh the 10% discount vs. just paying with something like the Arrival card to use those points
True.
But if you have an Ink Plus or Bold, couldn’t you “buy” UR points for less than 0.6 cents anytime you need them by going through a portal and buying a $200 visa gc from staples. Usually get at least 7x, so 1,400 for 6.95 cost = just under 0.5 cents per point.
You are right with the math and everyone is going to be different, but when I am “buying” UR points at that price, I would much rather be using them for one of the other transfer partners mentioned. If it is a wash, then I would prefer buying them from IHG than doing the UR/gift card route (unless my UR route was unlimited).
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