Overview of the Deal

Ok, “so what’s the catch?” There’s not really too much of a catch at all.

IHG–InterContinental Hotels–owns and operates the following hotel brands:

• Candlewood Suites
• Crowne Plaza
• Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts
  
• Holiday Inn Club Vacations
  
• Holiday Inn Express
• Hotel Indigo
• InterContinental
• Staybridge Suites

IHG’s customer rewards program is called Priority Club. About once a quarter, Priority Club has a promotion where they discount a selected number of their hotels down to 5,000 points/night.

How to get Priority Club Points

1. Stay at Priority Club hotels (Holiday Inn, InterContinental etc…)
2. Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points

How to Book Hotel Stays for $35/night

As I mentioned before, these hotels have been discounted down to 5,000 points/night. The secret is that, through a loophole, you can easily purchase 5,000 Priority Club points for $35. Having purchased the points you can then use them to book hotels participating in the promotion.

Part I:

1. Have AT LEAST 10,000 points in your account (that is the minimum amount you can book using cash + points)–see above on how to get points into your account
2. When you have 10k points, search around for a hotel with award availability, but not a hotel that is on the 5,000 point promo
3. Click button to book using 10,000 points + $70
   
4. Finish booking:  it will say that you are purchasing $70 worth of points (10k) immediately and only the points can be refunded upon cancellation, not $–this is exactly what you want to see
   
5. After you reserve, click to cancel. You should see your point value increase by 10k
6. There you have it, you just added 10k points to your account for $70

Part II

1. Check the Priority Club Points Break site to see which hotels are participating
   
2. Search for availability between today’s date and the expiration date listed at the bottom of the site
3. Book like normal, just at a great reduction

You can repeat again and again to rack up a bunch and then book the 5,000 point promo dates. Just remember to give the system a few mins between transactions to fully update or you might get errors about not having enough points!