Musings of The Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
Priority Club award rates are changing from 18 January 2012 with some new award categories and reclassification of some hotels between categories.
Hotel awards are generally fully refundable, so by booking awards now you have a bet each way – if award costs go up for that hotel you’ve saved the increase and if they go down you can cancel and rebook.
My efforts to rebook some hotel stays in 2010 paid off with my first night in 2011 achieving Platinum requalification. Their Crack the Case promotion together with the fact that all points count for elite status requalification gave me an idea. As per my usual practice I had some refundable stays booked, and had already requalified for Platinum status for 2011. I shifted a few 2010 stays from paid to awards (later getting a lucky break with pointsbreaks becoming available and switching out again to those) to ensure I completed the promotion in 2011 rather than 2010.
The result is the first 1-night stay in 2011 has given Platinum requalification from only 800-odd base points.
Priority Club’s 5000 points Points Break awards are out for the period to 30 December 2010. The list is a little better than some recent ones, and includes the following Intercontinental hotels:
A hotel I already had 4 regular awards booked at came up on the list so I’ve switched those out to save 80%. One of these was for a Flyer Talk Do (*A Air NZ mega do) which continues the fine run of PB awards being available for Dos in NZ.
Priority Club’s email systems seem to have had a bit of a meltdown with this promo. Countless people targetted for the promotion did not receive emails. If you have any Priority Club status or participated in their “Hilton Luckiest Loser” promo and did not receive a “Crack the Case” email I’d get in touch with Priority Club.
The promotion has small amounts of bonus points for achieving certain targets and a much larger additional bonus if 4 out of 5 targets are met (or 4 out of 4 for those who live in a country without any Priority Club-aligned credit cards). The targets include a (long) survey, getting a certain Priority Club credit card (where available), and numbers of nights, brands and Saturday nights stays between now and 31 May 2011. The amounts of bonuses and the numbers for each target are personalised – for some it is very lucrative and for others not so much.
As usual, the promo is stackable with other general Priority Club offers as well as individual hotel offers. For the period 20 September to 31 December there is also a “Sweet Dilemma” promo offering 1 free night every 2nd stay or double base points. (Asia-Pacific residents or stays at any Asia-Pacific hotels can only earn double base points but otherwise there is a choice to be made between these 2 options.)
In my case, I didn’t receive the email but following up with Priority Club I am targetted. Including some hotel-specific promotions I should earn at least 1 free night for every night stayed at any Intercontinental Hotels Group hotel over the next few months, and as luck would have it I have a need for quite a few hotel nights.
You have to be quick to get the best deals. Just a few days ago, Priority Club’s 5000 points a night points break awards for July and August were released. The best hotels on the list (eg Intercontinental Stockholm) have already sold out. This continues the recent trend. If you want a decent pointsbreak award you need to watch very closely for when they are released.
Fortunately, the release dates are normally 3 or 4 weeks before the start of each 2 month period and thus predictable and easy to use for those who plan ahead.
The 5,000 points a night Pointsbreak awards are now available for stays through to 30 August at selected hotels. As usual the list can be found here. IC Stockholm seems the best of the current bunch.
There was a period the other day when a Intercontinental Priority Club survey (for 100 PC points) meant to be for 1 time use was able to be repeated without limit. Apparently some people racked up thousands of points by manually repeating the survey several times, or many thousands of points by use of a computer script.
Accounts of people who took the survey multiple times are currently locked and under review while Priority Club works out what to do about it.
The lack of proper controls puts Intercontinental into a difficult spot. I personally didn’t take advantage of the loophole but am interested in seeing the outcome.
