Stays vs. Nights
What’s the difference?
A Stay is defined as one night or consecutive nights at the same hotel, regardless of frequency of check-in/check-out.
Why is it important?
Some bonus points offers are based on stays not nights. So if you’re staying two weeks in a hotel you will only get one qualifying stay.
Additionally this applies to Intercontinental stays were points are awarded per stay and not on spend.
How can I get around it?
Theoretically checking in and out doesn’t work (although has been known to occasionally work in practice ). So what’s the alternative? Moving between two hotels each night of your stay! Hard work but if you want the points it’s the only way. You might feel happier changing every couple of nights – just depends how badly you want those points. Typically there might be two IHG hotels within a short distance so this isn’t a massive problem (such as the IC Mark Hopkins and the IC San Francisco).
This is really confusing to people. Terms and conditions are vague.
@Gina True – every deal is different – you do need to check the small print to avoid getting caught out.
The terms and conditions are very confusing. I stayed 4 nights in a row in the same Holiday Inn Express and then found out that this was only one qualifying stay. I didn’t know that but guess you have to read the fine print. I’ll know better next time but think that HI Express could have explained the rules a lot better.
So if I’m staying 24 nights at the Intercontinental, I will only get 2000 points?
I did the qualifying night promotion. Stayed at one hotel for 2 nights with 2 rooms and figured this would get me 4 nights. I was dead wrong…with 2 hotel rooms it only counts as 1 qualifying night so I get screwed out of the 3 night stay promotion as I only got credit for one room and 2 qualifying nights.