I’m not intending to run the exercise of valuing elite nights with every hotel program, but my morbid curiosity is piqued with an IHG elite night.

What is an IHG elite night?

An elite night is what hotel chains typically use to quantify how loyal you are to a chain. It sounds simple enough where one paid night at a hotel translates to one elite night. However, it gets a little more nuanced than that. You typically need to book through the chain to earn that elite night (only a very limited few OTAs count). Hotel chains typically count free nights when booked with points or certificates, but it’s mixed results with a buy-one-get-one-free offer.

Lastly, you can also potentially earn elite nights for other activity such as spending on the hotel chain’s credit cards.

Collect enough of these elite nights and you can earn elite status with the chain. Let’s try taking a look at the IHG elite night structure.

IHG elite status levels

Earning elite status

There are four levels of IHG elite status:

• Silver Elite status at 10 elite nights
• Gold Elite status at 20 elite nights or 40,000 qualified points
• Platinum Elite status at 40 elite nights or 60,000 qualified points
• Diamond Elite status at 70 elite nights or 120,000 qualified points

Similar to Hyatt or Hilton, you can earn elite status either via nights or an alternative method (points).

Benefits of IHG elite status

So what do you get for each elite level?

Interestingly, there isn’t much separation between the Silver and Gold levels and then again between Platinum and Diamond.

Some of the more valuable aspects of the program come from IHG’s milestone rewards, in addition to the IHG elite status.

For clarity, each food and beverage reward can be thought of as a $20 off coupon at the hotel’s food outlets. The annual lounge membership for the member plus a guest at applicable hotels with a lounge. The confirmable suite upgrades are valid for stays up to five nights each and can be redeemed no more than 14 days in advance.

Key assumptions for valuing an IHG elite night

We’re going to have to make a few assumptions to move forward with establishing a value for each status level (and thus each elite night). Feel free to adjust these assumptions based on your own valuation, but I need to start somewhere to develop the initial estimate.

• Each hotel night paid with cash will cost you an average of $200 before taxes/fees. This is the portion of the rate that would earn you points.
• IHG points are valued at 0.64 cents each.
• You decide to perfectly earn the exact number of elite nights to earn elite status and nothing more.
• Three-fourths of the nights earned at each status level were paid for with cash. The rest were booked on points stays (including free night certificates).
• No stays are at a Staybridge Suites or Candlewood Suites property (earns half the base points).
• Where this gets complicated is that many hotels don’t have a lounge. Let’s assume 10% of stays are at a hotel with a lounge.
• 25% of hotels visited have a resort fee of $30 after taxes.
• Reasonable alternative breakfast option costs $15/person. This isn’t the cost of breakfast at the hotel but rather what I might expect to spend somewhere else if I didn’t have the benefit.
• Each stay is three nights in length.

The value of Silver Elite status

Let’s chip away at this using the assumptions above. Silver takes 10 nights to get there, and you expect to stay eight nights using cash. With an assumed rate of $200 pre-tax, you would typically expect to earn 16,000 IHG points ($200 x 8 nights x 10 base points per dollar). The 20% bonus then would net you a 3,200 points, or about $20.48.

Does no points expiration have a value to you? At best, it prevents you from buying a small bundle of points to keep them valid. But my assumption is that you’re earning status and thus earning points along the way. So I will say it offers zero value.

Having a 2PM late checkout is awesome and the most useful feature of the status. For a 2PM late checkout, I’d be willing to pay $5/night for the benefit. But the problem is that it’s not a guaranteed benefit unlike other programs. So I’ll dampen expectations by cutting the value in half. This gives us $25 in value.

Collectively, that puts me at $45.48 for Silver Elite status. Don’t expect too much with this first level of status and you won’t be disappointed.

The value of Gold Elite status

Now that we have a framework established for Silver status, let’s see if we can speed this up a bit more. Gold status takes 20 nights to achieve, and we’re assuming 15 will be paid via cash and five with points.

A 40% bonus on points is worth $76.80 ($200 x 15 nights x 10 base points x 40% bonus x 0.64 cents/point).

Let’s scale the 2PM late checkout based on the 20 night assumption, and that’s worth $50.

Does the rollover nights mean much? Recall that my assumption is you’re doing the bare minimum to earn status. That means no extra nights to rollover to the next year. I’m going to call it $0.

Getting Hertz Five Star status is better than nothing, but I think of the status as giving you extra Hertz points. I’m assuming that it’s only valuable to you if you aren’t already consistently giving Hertz business (or you would have higher status independently). Thus, let’s put Hertz Five Star status at $25.

That puts me at $151.80 for Gold status. This is not all that strong for a middle tier status level. I’m guessing not many will want their IHG elite status journey to end here.

Is Platinum the sweet spot of IHG elite status?

A 60% bonus on points is worth $230.40 ($200/night x 30 nights x 10 base points x 60% bonus x 0.64 cents/point).

The late checkout benefit scales to $100 based on 40 nights.

What about the reward night discount? Turns out this benefit only is offered as a promotional discount for select hotels. Could you stumble across something that will work for you? Maybe. But I should also say that I’ve had Platinum status and I’ve never benefitted from it. I’m going to go on a limb and call this $0.

I don’t have a general use for guaranteed availability. There are so many other hotels available in any given city that I would just go elsewhere. I’ll call this a $0 value.

What is a room upgrade worth? Suites are supposedly available for upgrades but the terms seem to imply that you’ll just get a one-category upgrade but can include a room with a preferred view. I’m tempted to temper my expectations and call it $5 per night. That gives us a value of $200.

The Platinum welcome amenity I’ve received is typically 600 IHG points per stay. Extrapolating this to 40 nights (13.3 stays), we get $51.20.

The early check-in benefit is up to each hotel to enforce. I haven’t seen consistency in how it’s enforced. Is it fair to say it’s worth less than late checkout? I’ll put a value of $1/night on the benefit, giving it about $40 over the course of 40 nights.

As for Gold Elite status, $25 for the Hertz Five Star status.

That puts my value of Platinum status at $646.60. But keep in mind that this valuation will get absolutely trashed with credit cards.

Diamond Elite status is best

There are no “cheats” to earn instant Diamond Elite status, with credit cards only giving complimentary Platinum Elite status. And even if you had complimentary Platinum Elite status, it doesn’t give you a shortcut to earning Diamond. You’ll have to earn it the old-fashioned butt-in-bed way.

Diamond gives a 100% bonus, so with the assumption of 53 paid nights, that’s a value of $678.40 ($200 rate x 53 nights x 10 base points x 100% bonus x 0.64 cents/point).

It’s a bit surprising that Diamond doesn’t earn a better late checkout benefit than Silver. Extrapolating the benefit value to 70 nights gets us $175 in value.

Room upgrades might be slightly better for Diamonds, but they might not be. There isn’t much of a guarantee that requires members to get the best-available room. But let’s assume you get something better than Platinums. So let’s call it $7.50/night instead of $5/night and that gives us $525 over the course of 70 nights.

The Diamond welcome amenity is where you’ll get the most bang for your buck if choosing breakfast. You can get breakfast covered for you and a guest, but odds are you won’t have a guest each night. Let’s assume that half the time you have a guest to share with. Over the course of 70 nights, that’s $1,575.

The early check-in benefit scales to $70.

Hertz President’s Circle status should mean a marginally better upgrade and I’m comfortable calling this a $100 value (assuming you actually use it).

Collectively, I’m at $3,123.40 for Diamond Elite status. This is a sizeable upgrade over Platinum Elite status and it will get even better when adding in the milestone rewards.

The value of milestone rewards

Thankfully, IHG made it simple enough to evaluate most of these benefits.

• 5,000 IHG points is worth $32
• 10,000 IHG points is worth $64
• Each food & beverage (f&b) voucher is good for $20 in goods, but it’s hard to optimize and I imagine your money will go farther outside the hotel. Let’s dampen the value by 25%. Two f&b vouchers is thus worth $30.
• Five f&b vouchers would then be worth $75.
• A confirmable suite upgrade is nice–if you can use it on your stay. I’d normally put a $50 surcharge on suites, and we’re assuming you’re staying for three nights. But since it can’t be applied until two weeks before your stay, it might not work on the stays you want to upgrade. So I want to cut the value in half. The value then becomes $75.
• An annual lounge membership is intriguing, but I would argue it’s far more valuable for a Platinum than a Diamond. A Platinum member wouldn’t get breakfast normally but the challenge is still finding a hotel with a lounge. We’re assuming a 10% hit rate on hotels with lounges, so bringing it all together, it’s worth $90 for Platinum Elites ($15 breakfast x 1.5 guests x 40 nights x 10% hotels with lounges).
• I can’t assign the same value to Diamond Elites because I already assumed they get breakfast on all stays. I would then be double-counting the value of breakfast. There is an incremental value to lounges, but it’s not much. Diamonds might be better off choosing another benefit or choosing a different welcome amenity. For the purpose of this analysis, let’s say Diamonds don’t choose this benefit.

What does this mean for each milestone? The optimal selection mostly gives $75 at each threshold. But at 40 and 70 nights, you get two options making it more impactful to reach those levels.

Summary of the Value of IHG Elite Status

It might be helpful to summarize based on the table from the beginning.

And then we can layer in the value of the milestones.

So what is the value of an elite night towards status if earned via nights?

• Silver Elite status would translate to $4.55 per elite night ($45.48 / 10 nights to get the status)
• Gold Elite status would translate to $11.34 per elite night ($226.80 / 20 nights to get the status)
• Platinum Elite status would translate to $22.97 per elite night ($918.60 / 40 nights to get the status)
• Diamond Elite status would translate to $53.65 per elite night ($3,755.40 / 70 nights to get the status)

If you earn your status via points or credit cards, no milestones for you.

Credit cards mess up the calculation

There exist IHG credit cards that completely remove the need to earn Platinum Elite status the hard way. Is it reasonable to assume someone getting a credit card that confers Platinum status that this member would get $646.60 (without milestones) in value from the status? No, not at all. That’s because if they were getting that much value, they wouldn’t need the credit card; they would just earn the status naturally.

So now let’s assume you get a credit card to earn the status you want and stay an average of 10 nights. Like all things, this could be more and it could be less but it’s our assumption. The good news is that everything scales proportionally. Just take the $646.60 value, divide by 40 nights, and multiply by 10 nights.

Platinum Elite status would then be worth $161.65. If you get your IHG elite status from a credit card with low annual fee, you might come out ahead.

Parting thoughts

Does anything above surprise you? Your view of whether Platinum is the sweet spot is probably going to depend on your stay pattern. If you could put in the effort to exclusively stay at hotels with lounges and earn Platinum via elite nights, you’ll get a lot of value. IHG offers a lot of value to its Diamonds, but keep in mind that it requires 10 more nights than Hyatt requires (and Hyatt gives shortcuts with its credit cards). That might mean Diamond isn’t worth it unless you happen to stay in a lot of IHG hotels.

Just remember that a lot of this boils down to your own travel choices and your valuations.