IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card Review
Brooklyn Lowery
Last Updated: April 18, 2024 IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card
CardRatings Editor's Analysis: Pros & Cons
- Earn 140,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.
- Enjoy a reward night when you redeem points for any consecutive four-night stay at an IHG hotel; your fourth night will be free.
- Earn up to 26 total points per $1 spent when you stay at an IHG hotel. Earn 5X points on travel and at gas stations and restaurants and 3 points per $1 on all other purchases.
- While you do earn extra points your first year as a cardholder, ongoing, this card is really best for people who intend to use it often for IHG stays. Otherwise, you're likely better off with a more general rewards card.
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CardName BASICS
You’ll get great rewards with the CardName in exchange for your devoted loyalty. Stay at one of the Intercontinental Hotel Group’s properties, which include the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Hotel Indigo, and you’ll earn up to 26 total points per $1 spent when you stay at an IHG hotel. The welcome bonus is also solid: earn 140,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.
CardName’s best features:
- Earn 140,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.
- Reward hotel night every year after your account anniversary.
- Enjoy a reward night when you redeem points for any consecutive four-night stay at an IHG hotel.
- Earn 5X points on travel and at gas stations and restaurants and 3 points per $1 on all other purchases.
- No foreign transaction fees.
- Receive up to a $100 reimbursement every four years for your Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or Nexus application reimbursement.
Top Features
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- Earn 130,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points after you spend $3,000 in purchases on the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card in your first 6 months of Card Membership.
- Get up to $200 back each year on eligible Hilton purchases after you use your Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card.
- Earn 12X Hilton Honors Bonus Points for each dollar of eligible purchases charged on your Card directly with a hotel or resort within the Hilton portfolio.
- Earn 6X Points for each dollar of purchases on your Card at U.S. restaurants, at U.S. supermarkets, and at U.S. gas stations.
- Earn 4X Points for each dollar on U.S. Online Retail Purchases.
- Earn 3X Points for all other eligible purchases on your Card.
- Earn a Free Night Reward from Hilton Honors after you spend $15,000 on eligible purchases on your Card in a calendar year.
- Enjoy complimentary Hilton Honors ™ Gold Status with your Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card.
- Spend $40,000 on eligible purchases on your Card in a calendar year and you can earn Hilton Honors™ Diamond Status through the end of the next calendar year.
- Enjoy complimentary National Car Rental® Emerald Club Executive® status. Enrollment in the complimentary Emerald Club® program is required. Terms apply.
- No Foreign Transaction Fees. Enjoy international travel without additional fees on purchases made abroad.
- $150 annual fee.
- Terms Apply.
WHAT OUR EDITORS LIKE BEST ABOUT THE CardName
Let's start with the basics: a good size chunk of bonus points for every $1 spent with a particular hotel brand is a pretty standard feature of hotel credit cards. Most competitor hotel groups have similar points structures. Same goes for the annual reward night in one of IHG's hotels. These incentives are the price of admission for any hotel that wants to be competitive in the credit card market.
However, a couple of things differentiate the CardName. In particular, that free night when you redeem your rewards for a consecutive four-night stay; the Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, or Nexus fee credit; some bonus points for everyday purchases and the Platinum Elite Status offered to cardholders. Let’s take a closer look.
When CardName cardholders redeem points for at least a consecutive four-night stay, you’ll be docked points for three nights and your fourth night will be free. That’s a highly unusual perk – most hotel rewards cards offer you a once-annually free night reward, but this card goes a step further and offers you that annual reward night as well as a reward night whenever you redeem for any consecutive four-night stay. The reward night opportunities should more than offset the card’s annual fee.
Further helping you offset the fee is the once-every-four-years reimbursement of up to $100 for your Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or Nexus application fee – a perk usually reserved for cards with much higher annual fees.
We certainly shouldn’t ignore the obvious rewards perks with this card: earn up to a whopping 26 total points per $1 spent when you stay at an IHG hotel. Earn 5X points on travel and at gas stations and restaurants and 3 points per $1 on all other purchases.
Lastly, and worth noting, is CardName cardholders receive an automatic upgrade to Platinum Elite status. Typically, you’d have to stay at qualifying hotels a minimum of 40 nights a year to get this status – which is really only feasible for perpetually jetlagged business travelers. Some of the perks of platinum include extended check-out, no blackout dates on reward nights, complimentary room upgrades and guaranteed room availability. But the best perk is 50 percent bonus earnings on top of your base points.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDES OF THE CardName
The biggest rewards with the CardName come when you stay at IHG hotels and resorts. For everything else, the rewards rate is on the low side: five points per $1 spent on purchases on travel and at gas stations and restaurants and three points for every $1 spent on all other purchases is comparable to other rewards cards, but you can do better than that if you don’t plan to use your rewards for IHG stays.
Furthermore, the interest rate on this card is on the higher side, so if you anticipate needing to carry a balance from time to time, you’ll likely want to look to another card as the interest alone would eat up any rewards you earn using the card.
CardName CARDHOLDER SCORES
CardRatings conducts a survey annually to learn what actual cardholders think of their cards. Here are the results:
| Current Scores | Past Scores | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Score | 79.8 | 78.2 |
| Features Satisfaction | 8.1 | 7.8 |
| Customer Service | 7.8 | 8.5 |
| Website/App Usability | 7.6 | 7.6 |
| Likelihood of Continuing to Use | 8.4 | 8.3 |
| Recommend to a Friend/Colleague | 7.9 | 7.1 |
*Scores above reflect the results of surveys with actual cardholders. Full methodology below.
HOW THE CardName COMPARES TO OTHER HOTEL CARDS
CardName vs. CardName
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This is an interesting comparison because, while the CardName is a general travel rewards card, you can transfer your Ultimate Rewards points earned with the card to your IHG One Rewards account and redeem them directly through the hotel’s loyalty program. In other words, both cards could technically help you earn discounted stays at IHG properties; it’s just that the CardName offers you the flexibility to use your points for lots of other discounted or "free" travel as well.
New CardName members can earn 60,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first three months of card membership. You could choose to transfer your bonus points to one of several Ultimate Rewards airline or hotel partners (including IHG, as mentioned above) or you could redeem them directly through Chase Travel℠. If you redeem through Chase Travel, your points are worth 25% more, which means the bonus is worth $750 in that case.
All that said, you’re still dealing with a general travel rewards card and not a brand-specific card, so you will miss out on those loyalty perks offered by the CardName. These cards charge similar annual fees: AnnualFees for the CardName and AnnualFees for the CardName.
CardName vs. CardName
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The CardName isn’t a hotel-branded card but it does give you the chance to earn rewards that you can redeem for hotel stays – and any number of other travel-related purchases for that matter.
What you’ll get with the CardName is the opportunity to earn a flat two miles per $1 spent on every purchase and redemption options with any airline or hotel as well as any number of other travel-related purchases. What you WON’T get is the perks that go along with loyalty, like free annual night stays or a free night when you redeem a certain amount of rewards.
CardName cardholders do enjoy no foreign transaction fees and a similar annual fee at $95. They also can earn a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within three months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel. You can fly any airline, stay at any hotel, anytime and not have to worry about blackout dates. Plus, you can transfer your miles to multiple leading travel loyalty programs. And, recently, Capital One announced that CardName cardholders are also eligible for that Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fee reimbursement.
Ultimately, you’ll need to decide whether your loyalty to the IHG brand is strong enough that you’ll be satisfied earning the bulk of your rewards through purchases with that hotel group and redeeming your rewards for stays there as well.
CardName vs. CardName
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Right now the CardName is offering a great welcome offer opportunity: 130,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 in the first six months. Terms apply, American Express is a CardRatings advertiser. One drawback with the Hilton card is that you’ll need to spend at least $15,000 on eligible purchases on your card each calendar year (after that welcome bonus offer, anyway) to earn that ongoing weekend night stay reward, which does give the IHG card an advantage over this card in that there's no spending threshold to earn the reward night on the IHG card.
On an ongoing basis, you’ll earn 12 points per $1 spent at participating Hilton properties with the CardName; six points per $1 spent at U.S. restaurants, U.S. gas stations and U.S. restaurants; four points per $1 spent on U.S online retail; and three points per $1 on all your other eligible purchases. That means you stand to earn substantially more points on your everyday purchases with the Hilton card than you do with the IHG card. Cardholders also enjoy 10 complimentary airport lounge visits each year with this card, a rare perk on a card with only a $150 annual fee. Terms apply. See Rates and Fees.
Once again, this decision will come down to loyalty – do you have it to Hilton or to IHG? All other perks aside, that question should be the first you answer.
WHO SHOULD APPLY FOR THE CardName?
Loyal customers of IHG and business travelers who only stay at its hotels every time they travel should definitely consider the CardName. The perks that come with Platinum Elite Status, the free night opportunities, the hefty welcome bonus and the ongoing rewards earning should entice customers who are looking for a hotel they can call a home away from home.
Survey Methodology: CardRatings commissioned Op4G in September 2023 to conduct surveys among 1,869 cardholders nationwide. CardRatings website analytics from Jan. 1, 2023-Aug. 31, 2023 were used to determine a selection of the most popular cards and additional cards were included to add survey breadth. Responses to each of nine questions were given on a scale of 1-10 and respondents' scores were then averaged under broad topics. To determine the overall score, responses from questions 1-8 were summed and the answer to "How likely are you to recommend this card to a friend, coworker or family member?" was double weighted. “Current Scores” reflect scores from the most recent survey (2023); "Past Scores" reflect scores from the 2022 survey.
To see the rates and fees for the CardName please visit the following link: See Rates and Fees.
IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card Compared to Other Hotel Cards
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