IHG One Rewards: Should you join?

Avios collectors spend a lot of time thinking about flights and rather less time thinking about where they sleep when they land. It’s only natural to be more excited about finding a good redemption seat, squeezing extra value out of a Companion Voucher, or finally spotting Club World availability on the route you wanted. Hotels usually become something you sort out afterwards.

Frequent travellers will tell you that’s a rookie mistake. Hotel programmes can be just as useful, especially if you travel often for work, weekend breaks, or longer holidays. IHG One Rewards is one of the larger ones, covering nearly 7,000 properties across more than 100 countries. It’s free to join, earns points on stays, and has a tier structure that gets better as you climb it.

In this blog, we’ll explore how the programme works, what the points are worth, and whether it makes sense for Avios collectors to join.

An Overview of IHG One Rewards

IHG One Rewards is the loyalty programme for IHG Hotels & Resorts, one of the world’s largest hotel groups. Membership is free, which is always a good start. You earn points mainly through hotel stays, although promotions, partner spending, and co-branded credit cards can help speed things along. The base earning rate is 10 points per US$1 spent at most IHG brands. Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites earn 5 points per US$1.

Points can be redeemed for free hotel nights, known as Reward Nights, with no formal blackout dates. IHG uses dynamic pricing instead of a fixed award chart, so the number of points needed changes depending on demand and dates. Sometimes this works in your favour. Sometimes you’ll stare at the points cost for a Tuesday night in Birmingham and wonder who exactly is driving demand that week. Reward Nights start from 5,000 points, and you can also combine points and cash if you don’t have enough for a full redemption.

For Avios collectors wondering about Avios partners in the hotel space, IHG points can be transferred to British Airways Club and Iberia Plus, though the economics of doing so are worth examining carefully. More on that below.

Which Hotels Are Included?

IHG's brand portfolio is massive, which is both the programme's main strength and also why it's harder to summarise neatly. The core brands UK travellers are most likely to encounter are:

• InterContinental: Upper-upscale. Mostly found in city centres and resorts globally.
• Kimpton: Design-led boutique hotels. Especially strong in the US/
• Hotel Indigo: Neighbourhood hotels with a local character. Now in many second-tier UK cities.
• Crowne Plaza: Business-focused, consistent mid-to-upper tier.
• Voco: A newer collection brand, which often includes converted independent hotels.
• Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express: The programme's volume base, reliable and widely distributed.
• Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites: Extended-stay properties.
• Six Senses: Ultra-luxury wellness resorts, added in 2019.
• Ruby Hotels: Acquired in 2025. Compact lifestyle hotels in European city centres.

IHG also covers Iberostar Beachfront Resorts (outside Cuba) and has newer collection brands, Vignette and the forthcoming Noted, launching in 2026. The sheer size of the portfolio means there's almost certainly an IHG property wherever you're going. In major cities, you can walk five minutes in any direction and pass three Holiday Inns before you’ve even found your coffee.

Elite Status Tiers

The programme has five status levels:

Silver and Gold are relatively modest. You get bonus points on stays, which is nice enough, but the perks do not change your life in any meaningful way.

Things become a lot more appealing once you hit Platinum, with early check-in, a non-guaranteed room upgrade, and a welcome amenity all adding up over a year of regular stays.

Diamond adds free breakfast and a guaranteed room, which matters a lot more than it sounds once you’ve paid £28 for scrambled eggs in a business hotel a few times. Even at entry level, Club members get free Wi-Fi, member-only pricing, reward nights with no blackout dates, and late checkout, subject to availability.

One detail worth noting is that IHG is currently the only major hotel chain that rolls over additional elite nights into the following year to help with requalification. Hilton dropped this in 2025. If you finish a year with more nights than needed to requalify, the surplus rolls forward.

Milestone Rewards are the Programme's Real Differentiator

This is one of the things that makes IHG more interesting than many comparable hotel programmes. In addition to the standard elite status tiers, IHG awards Milestone Rewards every 10 nights from 20 nights onward, all the way up to 100 nights in a calendar year. These are separate from status and are chosen by the member from a menu of options.

The choices available at each milestone include:

• Confirmable suite upgrade vouchers, bookable in advance, unlike the non-guaranteed upgrades that come with status
• Food and beverage credit (up to $20 per voucher) to use during a stay
• Annual lounge membership, which gives access to the hotel's Club Lounge throughout a stay, valid for the remainder of the year and the following calendar year
• Bonus points

The confirmable suite upgrades are easily the best option here. Unlike the upgrade perks attached to Platinum and Diamond status, which depend on availability, timing, and whether the hotel manager woke up in a generous mood that morning, these can be applied at the time of booking. That's a concrete and predictable benefit for a specific stay at a property with a suite worth having.

Using Your IHG Points

The most valuable use of IHG points is free hotel nights. With dynamic pricing and no blackout dates, availability is generally good, though the points required for a given property can vary by date.

A Holiday Inn Express might cost 10,000–15,000 points per night, and a top InterContinental in a major city on a busy weekend could run to 70,000–100,000 points or more. IHG points value is approximately 0.4p–0.5p each for hotel redemptions, which is a reasonable benchmark for working out whether a reward night makes sense versus paying cash.

You can also use points for experiences, such as dining, events, and occasional travel packages, though hotel nights usually give the strongest value. The lack of blackout dates and the ability to mix points with cash make the programme more flexible than many travellers expect.

What's the Relationship Between IHG Points and Avios?

IHG is one of the Avios partners in the hotel space. You can transfer IHG One Rewards points to British Airways Club or Iberia Plus. The standard conversion is 10,000 IHG points to 2,000 Avios, a 5:1 ratio.

The maths on this is worth doing before you transfer. If your IHG points are worth 0.4p–0.5p each and used for hotels, then 10,000 points represent £40–£50 in hotel value. But 2,000 Avios are typically worth around £20–£30, depending on how you redeem them. Transferring IHG points to Avios is generally a value downgrade, not an upgrade.

This is true for most hotel-to-airline transfers, and Avios flights are best earned through dedicated Avios-earning channels rather than converted from hotel points. The most effective routes for UK collectors are a BA American Express card (the most direct earn), a Barclays Avios credit card, or Nectar point conversions via Sainsbury's spend.

That said, there are two situations where the transfer does make sense:

• Small top-up: If you're 2,000–5,000 Avios short of a reward flight you want to book, transferring a block of IHG points is a faster, cheaper option than buying Avios outright.
• Expiring points. If your IHG points are approaching expiry and you have no upcoming hotel stays, converting them to Avios preserves some value that would otherwise disappear entirely.

In both cases, the transfer is non-reversible and processed in blocks of 10,000 IHG points, so check the numbers before confirming.

How to Transfer IHG Points to Avios

The process is easy:

• Log in to your IHG One Rewards account at ihg.com
• Navigate to your profile, then the Rewards section
• Select British Airways Club or Iberia Plus as the transfer destination
• Enter your airline membership number and the amount to transfer (in blocks of 10,000 IHG points)
• Confirm. Transfers are non-reversible once submitted

Processing time is typically a few days, though it can take up to two to six weeks in some cases. Allow time if you're transferring ahead of a specific booking.

What Are IHG Points Actually Worth?

The honest answer is that it depends on how you use them. The IHG points value benchmark of 0.4p–0.5p per point applies to average hotel redemptions. Some redemptions are excellent, such as a night at a Kimpton or Hotel Indigo, which would cost £200 in cash for 30,000–40,000 points. Others are poor, mainly luxury properties, during peak periods where the dynamic pricing pushes the points cost far above what the cash rate would suggest.

IHG runs promotions constantly, such as bonus points for a minimum number of stays within a period, double points on selected brands, and status challenges for new or lapsed members. These can really improve the earnings rate above the baseline. Registering for these before each stay is the single most effective way to accelerate your balance. This is one reason many frequent travellers build balances faster here than with rival hotel schemes.

The Downsides Worth Knowing

There are a few points you should keep in mind before committing:

• Dynamic pricing cuts both ways: Without a fixed award chart, there's no floor on the cost of a redemption. A hotel that's 15,000 points per night in February might be 60,000 in August. Planning ahead helps, but flexibility isn't always possible.
• Silver and Gold status aren't especially rewarding: The point bonus is useful, but the lack of perks at the lower tiers means the early climb feels slow. The programme starts paying back more visibly if you can reach Platinum within a year.
• Upgrades are inconsistent: The non-guaranteed upgrade benefit that comes with Platinum and Diamond status is highly property-dependent. Some hotels upgrade proactively; others treat it as theoretical. The Milestone Reward suite upgrade vouchers, which are confirmable, are more reliable precisely because they're contractual rather than discretionary.
• Points expire if you're inactive: Club-level members (the entry tier) have their points expire after 12 months of no earn or redeem activity. Elite members' points don't expire as long as they hold status. Worth monitoring if you have a large balance and an inactive year ahead.

Who Should Join?

IHG One Rewards works best for travellers who stay in hotels semi-regularly, mainly business travellers, anyone who uses mid-range hotels frequently, and people who want a single loyalty programme that covers a global footprint. One of the most useful things about IHG is the range. You can stay somewhere basic and practical for one week, then use the same programme for a nicer InterContinental or Kimpton stay later on without splitting your loyalty across five different hotel schemes.

The programme is especially strong in Europe, the US, and Asia, where the IHG network is densest, and properties are easiest to find in major cities, which matters more than people think. A loyalty programme is only useful if you can actually use it without going out of your way. As one of the practical Avios partners in the hotel space, it also sits alongside your flight points collection.

It's less useful for:

• Infrequent hotel guests, as the points accumulate slowly without regular stays and promotions
• Travellers who primarily use independent or boutique properties outside the IHG portfolio
• Anyone expecting luxury perks at low status levels. Silver and Gold don't deliver much beyond the points bonus

Can You Use Avios Points for Hotels?

Not directly through IHG. Avios are a flight currency first, and IHG runs its own separate points system. The connection between the two programmes runs in one direction: IHG points can be transferred to Avios, not the other way around. If your goal is to book a hotel with Avios, British Airways does offer hotel bookings through its travel portal, but these are cash-equivalent redemptions rather than using the IHG One Rewards system.

The smarter approach for most collectors is to keep the two currencies separate. Use Avios flights for the long-haul leg and IHG points for hotel stays at the destination. Both are free to join and run independently, so there's no reason not to earn in both simultaneously.

Should You Join?

Yes, if you stay in hotels with any regularity. The transfer route to Avios exists and has its uses, but treat it as a last resort rather than a strategy. Transferring hotel points to airline miles almost always results in a loss of value, and IHG is no exception. Keep the two programmes running in parallel, earn in both, and redeem each where it works best.