Thank you IHG points!
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been as grateful for my points and miles hobby as I am right now.
We are renovating our house and we will be living in a local Staybridge Suites for the next 10 days totally free thanks to my International Hotel Group (IHG) points.
The living room of our suite
The renovation includes gutting the kitchen (see gory picture below) and replacing the floors throughout most of the front half of our house. Its a huge undertaking! While we technically could live there during the remodel, it would be really rough (no kitchen AND no floors!?!), especially with a 3-year-old.
What used to be my kitchen
Instead of roughing it there at the house, we are spread out in a spacious 1-bedroom suite with a living room, full kitchen and separate bedroom area.
We are splashing in the hotel pool every afternoon, enjoying the incredible free daily breakfast, and taking advantage of the hotel’s evening dinner buffet three days each week, which includes beer and wine (shockingly, also free).
The kitchen area in our suite
How did I come by enough points to fund an extended stay like this? Well, earlier this year I earned almost 60,000 IHG Reward Club points by hand-writing and mailing in over 90 postcards during IHG’s Priceless Surprises promotion.
This Staybridge Suites usually requires 20,000 points per night for reward stays, yet I was able to get our room for only 5,000 points per night thanks to the IHG PointBreaks program.
In a nutshell, PointBreaks are IHG hotels at which you can book award night stays for only 5,000 points per night. Each quarter, IHG releases a new list of PointBreaks, and they only offer a limited number of rooms at each PointBreak hotel for 5,000 points.
Since PointBreaks offer such a great value for your points (sometimes there are even a few InterContinental Hotels on the list!), they are popular and book up quickly.
I knew that this remodel was coming up, so early this spring I was watching closely for the next round of IHG PointBreaks to be released. I was pleasantly surprised to find a local Staybridge Suites on the PointBreak list, right about when we would likely need somewhere to stay! I booked as many consecutive nights as I could find in early June, which was 10 nights for a total of 50,000 points.
In the end, our 10-night stay (including all of that free food) cost me nothing more than some stamps and a cramped hand. This is why collecting points and miles is amazing – if you put in the work, it can bring so much goodness to your life!
Are you an IHG Rewards Club member? Please share your experience in a comment below!
New PointBreaks Hotels for 5,000 IHG Points (October 31st, 2016 - January 2017) - The Frugal South
Tuesday 1st of November 2016
[…] wrote this summer about how we stayed at a local Staybridge Suites (on PointBreaks) while we remodeled our house. It saved us a ton of hassle and over a thousand […]
IHG PointBreaks for July thru October 2016 - Hotels for only 5,000 points! - The Frugal South
Tuesday 26th of July 2016
[…] used IHG points to book a 9-night stay at a local PointBreaks hotel while we were remodeling our house recently. It was an incredible blessing and I was so grateful for a nice place to stay during the […]
Jay
Thursday 9th of June 2016
IHG pointbreaks are amazing when you can get them to work for you. I have been fortunate that a few times I have been able to redeem a few pointbreak stays and its been more of a surprise than something I have planned.
That being said, IHG's pointbreaks have saved be 10s of thousands of points. Love it!