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Update at 7:48 PM ET: None of the packages have sold out.

Today is the second day of five weeks of discounted travel packages from the US Travel Association called Daily Getaways. Every weekday at 1 PM ET, a discounted travel package or packages will go on sale and will often sell out in a few minutes. Every weekend I’ll preview the deals for the next week, and the morning of interesting deals, I’ll have a full write up.

Today’s deal is discounted IHG Rewards points:

  • 15,000 IHG points | $90 | 1,000 available | 0.6 cpp
  • 25,000 IHG points | $150 | 1,000 available | 0.6 cpp
  • 50,000 IHG points | $293 | 1,500 available | 0.59 cpp
  • 100,000 IHG points | $565 | 3,850 available | 0.57 cpp

You can buy a maximum of three of the 100k package, five of the 15k package, and four of the 25k and 50k packages. Maxing out this promotion would mean buying 675k IHG Rewards points for about $4,000.

IHG Rewards points can be used for free hotel nights starting at 5,000 points per night, so 675k points could book 135 award nights.

  • Is 0.57 cents per IHG point a good deal?
  • How can you use this deal to get $29 hotel rooms?

Buying IHG points for 0.57 cents each is about a 20% discount off the prevailing price of 0.7 cents per point. But I wouldn’t go overboard buying points unless you are reasonably confident you’ll use them quickly because cash is better to have than points, and the award chart can always be devalued.

There are two main uses for the points: regular awards and PointBreaks.

Regular awards cost 10k to 50k points per night, meaning $57 to $285 per night if you purchased the points today, depending on the hotel category.

Check the hotel you want on your dates to see if the retail price is higher or lower than the price you would get if you purchased the points today for an award night. I don’t think you’ll find a ton of value in purchasing these points for awards nights on the regular award chart.

The better use of the points is for PointBreaks hotels. PointBreaks are a rotating list of hotels from all nine categories that cost 5,000 points for 2-3 months only. At today’s point prices, you can get a hotel for $29 if it’s on the PointBreaks list and you buy the points today.

The last PointBreaks list came out in February for stays through May 31, 2015.

My Plan

I’m going to buy one 25k point package. I am considering a four night PointBreaks stay, which would cost 20k points, and it is always a good idea to have at least 5k points left in your IHG account because you need to have at least 5k points in your account already to buy more points for 0.7 cents each through this trick.

Will This Deal Sell Out?

Last year the 100k package sold out, but the 50k, 25k, and 15k packages didn’t. This year, the number of 100k packages has increased from 1,000 to 3,850, so my guess is none of the packages will sell out.

Purchasing the Packages

To maximize your chances of getting in on the deal, I recommend using a site like whattimeisit.com to figure out the official time. The sale starts at 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT / 7 AM HT. This year’s sales all started on time to the second. Keep refreshing the deal page until you see the BUY NOW button replace the SEE DETAILS button.

Screen Shot 2015-03-23 at 11.55.17 PM

This is what happens if you try to purchase something when all quantities are already in someone’s cart.

This doesn’t mean the deal is sold out. If someone doesn’t complete his purchase, that quantity will immediately become available for someone else. Keep checking until the dreaded “Sold Out” appears.

Key Links

Do you plan to buy IHG Rewards points? Post your successful or failed attempt in the comments, so we can gauge how quick you had to be to snag a deal.

 

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