IHG seemingly increased its unofficial award pricing caps: Here's what it means for you

In 2020, IHG switched to dynamic award pricing; since then, award rates at most properties have generally varied alongside paid rates. As a result, it's become increasingly difficult to get outsize value when redeeming IHG points.

Over the last few months, I've gotten between 0.7 and 1.1 cents per point when redeeming IHG One Rewards points for stays. Especially considering you can buy IHG points for as little as 0.5 cents per point, I've been pretty satisfied with these redemptions.

However, the negative of dynamic award pricing is that rates can (and do) change at any time. IHG can change its algorithm — including any unpublished caps or minimums — at any time without notice. Based on reports from FlyerTalk users and a subsequent article from LoyaltyLobby, IHG seemingly increased some of its award pricing caps April 4.

In particular, nonresort properties that previously had unpublished award pricing caps of 120,000 points per night now seem to have higher caps (or perhaps no cap). For example, the InterContinental Paris — Champs-Elysees Etoile in France now has rates as high as 149,000 points per night.

And I found a night at the InterContinental Osaka that cost 192,000 points. The comparable paid rate for this night is $827.06, which means you'd get a value of 0.43 cents per point. If I needed to stay in Osaka that night, I'd redeem points from another program or at least stay at another IHG property.

This increase of unpublished award pricing caps is bad news for anyone who likes to (or was planning to) redeem IHG points for an aspirational stay at an expensive IHG property. After all, one of the ways to get outsize value from your points is on expensive nights that hit the award pricing cap.

As a reminder, IHG already capped award nights at 250,000 points for several aspirational resort properties. Luckily, this cap seemingly hasn't changed.

But it's worth noting that in 2020, the InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort was the most expensive award property in the IHG portfolio at 100,000 points per night. Now, award nights at this property top out at 250,000 points per night. Regardless of how you look at it, that's a huge devaluation over a relatively short time.

Related: How to maximize award redemptions with the IHG One Rewards program

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Bottom line

It's difficult to tell when a loyalty program that uses dynamic award pricing changes how it prices award nights. But it sure looks like IHG has increased, or perhaps removed, award pricing caps for many of its most aspirational nonresort properties. I also suspect IHG may have shifted its algorithm to give lower redemption rates on some aspirational and high-occupancy stays, but this is more difficult to determine without having access to an extensive data set.

Depending on how you use your IHG points, the April 4 changes may not be negative for you. Since April 4, I've booked a few IHG award stays at slightly better redemption rates than I'd been getting over the last few months. And since I don't plan to redeem more than 60,000 IHG points for any stay — I use Hilton free night certificates and Hyatt points when booking expensive, aspirational stays — the increase of IHG award caps won't personally hurt me.

However, it's not a good look, especially since many travelers save their points for aspirational stays that carry high paid rates. Although I love the IHG fourth-reward-night-free perk, I appreciate programs like World of Hyatt and Wyndham Rewards that continue to publish and use award charts for most properties.