The IHG Premier card is the current top card option for the Intercontinental Hotel Group of hotels. In my opinion, it’s an excellent overall specialist card that I don’t hesitate to recommend.
Chase issues the IHG Premier card, so it falls under Chase’s rules like 5/24. It’s a mastercard and is plastic construction, although it used to be metal.
IHG contains some very popular brands like Holiday Inn. Who remembers those commercials from the 2000’s where someone isn’t quite a doctor, but they did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night? Regent hotels, Crowne Plaza, and the namesake Intercontinental are some of the nicer brands in their portfolio, along with Kimptons, which are more unique, niche hotels that I’ve always found to be pretty cool. IHG is the third largest overall hotel network behind Marriott and Hilton at this time of this writing, which positions them well to be able to to find both budget options and aspirational destinations.
The IHG Premier card comes with a $99 annual fee, and a number of benefits to offset the expense. First, it’s one of the cheapest cards to offer a TSA Precheck/Global Entry credit of up to $100 every four years. It also grants the cardholder Platinum Elite status in IHG’s new One Rewards program, which is their second highest status tier. Finally, and most significantly, you can get a free hotel award night each card anniversary year, which is easily worth more than $100.
To me, this card fits in as a specialist. The earning rates were recently improved, but still aren’t quite good enough to make it a legitimate workhorse card. I don’t recommend it for a lot of day-to-day spending, but definitely recommend holding it for the benefits it provides. The card earns 3 points per dollar as a base rate, 5 total points per dollar on travel, gas, and dining (which is actually pretty good for gas), and 10 total points per dollar from the card on IHG hotels. IHG spending will also earn 10 points per dollar for being a rewards member, and a 60% bonus (6 more points per dollar) for the Platinum Elite status bestowed by this card, for a grand total of about 25 points per dollar at IHG hotels when spending on the IHG Premier card. It’s never quite the full 10+10+6=26 points per dollar, because some of what the hotel charges is categorized as taxes and fees, so while you still earn 10x points spending on the IHG card, those taxes and fees don’t earn the 10+6 regular rewards.
The annual award night is the real point of this card. Each year, you’ll get one certificate capped at 40,000 points. Like some other hotel cards, these can be stacked to use two with one another if you time a trip right after you receive the second free night certificate. I peg the value of IHG points at about 0.5 cents each, so a 40,000 point certificate should get you a hotel room worth about $200. A $200 hotel night for a $99 annual fee, plus getting Platinum status, makes this an easy value proposition as a keeper card for me.
Who is this card a match for? That’s a trickier question than with some other cards. I see two types of people who could really use this card. The first is relative newcomers to the travel rewards game who aren’t super comfortable with a high annual fee. They could have this card as their first or only hotel cobranded card, and get great value from it without too much to keep track of. It was personally by second hotel credit card, after the Hilton Aspire, and gave me great hotel coverage between the Hilton and IHG portfolios.
For more advanced optimizers, however, higher annual fee hotel cards tend to provide more value, so carrying this card means you need to also have the travel demand to use the free nights consistently on top of whatever other cards you have. Between Kristyn and I, we now have 5 hotel credit cards, and still use this one. It's getting tougher to manage that many, though! Either way, it’s a nice B tier hotel card that’s not hard to justify, and is probably one of the three or four best hotel cards in my opinion.
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