The Best Hotel Rewards Credit Card Deal I’ve Found Helped Me Make A Broadway Dream Come True
I was knee deep in Broadway ticket costs and needed a cheap place to crash in or around the theater district; I’m all about the subway and prefer Lower Manhattan if I had my druthers but quickness and ease of movement as we museum-ed and Broadway-ed for 28 hours was paramount for this outing. So midtown it would be.
But this was Christmastime and mid-week and midtown.
Oof, the prices.
And then I got an email from IHG about the annual credit card anniversary benefit I had forgotten about in the 12 months since I had applied for and been approved to receive the IHG Rewards Club Mastercard.
The IHG Rewards Club Mastercard, a card I hadn’t used since it first arrived and I spent the requisite $1000 to receive the generous 60,000 IHG Reward Points sign-up bonus, has an annual fee of $49 that is waived for the first year. I was about to cancel the card before being charged the $49 but then I got that email.
I needed to midtown NYC hotel at Christmastime on a business weeknight and I got the email about my free night. But this is NYC, no way I’d be able to redeem a reward night there, right? Wrong.
For that modest $49 annual fee (Marriott Visa, my usual go-to credit card, and also a Chase credit card, charges an $85 annual fee), cardholders are awarded a free night award certificated without limitations. WITHOUT LIMITATIONS I TELL YOU!
I almost hesitate to write this, seriously, because I feel like it’s an easily closed loophole, easily able to become more like Marriott’s credit card anniversary reward night deal which caps the class of hotel at which the same kind of annual reward night stay certificate can be used, but IHG card holders are able to use their free night ANYWHERE no matter the cost of the IHG property — Kimpton, Intercontinental, Hotel Indigo, Crown Plaza, Holiday Inn and so on — ANYWHERE including midtown Manhattan at the classy Intercontinental on a business weeknight at Christmastime.
Nice view for a $49 annual fee!
That’s exactly where and when I used mine, to make my teen daughter’s incredible Christmas on Broadway dream experience possible. The Intercontinental room I booked cost $369 at the time I booked it on the IHG site.
$369 is a bit more than $49, which is essentially what I paid to stay that Tuesday night with my wife and oldest daughter to visit MoMA and see three Broadway shows!
I don’t know all the deets on all the points and miles and rewards available in the wild wide credit card world but the IHG Rewards Club Mastercard annual reward night deal in exchange for a $49 annual fee (starting in year 2) has to be one of the best in the business.
*This isn’t sponsored by anyone, I just thought y’all should know about this because a great hotel room every year for $49 is incredible.
