January 12, 2015

IHG Comes Through Again

Emily has to be in San Francisco for work in a couple of weeks.  She was scheduled to come home on a Friday so we figured we'd make a weekend out of it.  For some reason (there are a couple of big conferences in town) hotels are either sold out or outrageous.  The St. Regis was pricing at almost $800, the W at $600+.  The Le Meridien was sold out.  So were both Hyatt properties.

Ridiculous San Francisco hotel prices

Cash and points availability and points availability at the SPG properties were both zeroed out.  So I started looking at other options.  The last few trips, we've either stayed at the W or St. Regis.  The InterContinental San Francisco is just a few blocks away in the SoMa area.

InterContinental San Francisco

Paid rates were also going for $800+ AI but there was award availability!  Both Emily and I were sitting on balances of 100,000 IHG points so this was a no-brainer and I booked it.


That's nearly 1.93 cents per point.  Pretty much unheard of for IHG points.  This is a perfect example of how this hobby can pay off big time.  Diversify your point balances and you'll have options when you need them - whether that be a last minute flight or a tough (meaning really expensive) hotel market like San Francisco.

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