Bottom Line

You only have to stay at an IHG property (of which there are 4400+ around the world) one night per year to make this card valuable to keep in your wallet for the long term as one of the biggest benefits of the IHG One Rewards Club Premier card is earning one free night per year (up to 40k points). This easily offsets the $99 annual fee. The high sign-up bonus (currently 140k, as high as 200k) adds to the value of the card, as does the 4th night free when you book 4 consecutive nights with points.

Why You Might Want This Card

Not only is the current 140k sign-up bonus enticing (we’ve seen up to 200k sign-up bonuses as well), with a low $3k minimum spend in the first three months, but the IHG Rewards Club Premier card is one that makes sense to keep in your wallet for the long term. The modest $99 annual fee is made up with a free room each year after your anniversary date (up to 40k points). The other big perk of this card that might make you want to keep it around after qualifying for the sign-up bonus is getting a 4th night free when you book at least 4 nights with points. You can use this benefit as many times as you’d like, and you can also stack it, so if you book 8 consecutive nights with points, 2 of those nights would be free!

A few other benefits to round this card out is automatic IHG Platinum Elite status as long as you own the card, a $25 United TravelBank deposit into your MileagePlus account twice per year, a credit for Global Entry, TSA Pre-check, or Nexus, plus several spending multipliers like 5x points on travel, dining, and gas and up to 26x points at IHG Hotels and Resorts (10x points with this card, 10x points from IHG on stays for being an IHG One Rewards member, and 6x points from IHG on stays with Platinum Elite status (which is a benefit of this card).

Exceptions To The Rule

Here are some exceptions where the card might not be good for you:

• You don’t ever stay at IHG properties so the free night per year would be wasted

About IHG Rewards

The IHG Rewards Club offers points toward a substantial network of hotels, including Holiday Inn, StayBridge Suites, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental and Hotel Indigo. It’s one of our personal favorite cards because you have options in more than 5,400 properties in approximately 100 countries, including hotels in major cities like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and London.

Once you pick your stay, there are 4 membership levels to benefit from, each with its own perks: Club, Gold Elite, Platinum (which comes with the IHG Chase Visa) and Spire Elite. Earning is super easy through hotel stays within the IHG network, and on everyday purchases with partner vendors like GrubHub, OpenTable and Hertz.

Points can be transferred to more than 200 partner airlines -- but you'll lose 30% of their value. It's an option if you need to get that last-minute flight or if you're desperate to use your account to ensure that your points won't expire after 12 months of inactivity.

But the best redemption will be for hotel stays. When it comes time to book, make sure to check out the IHG PointBreak list that comes out every few months, where you can book hotels starting at just 5,000 points per night and extend your stay with your anniversary night and your fourth night free bonuses that come with the IHG Chase card.

(WRITER’S NOTE: While traveling through France, we were able to use our complimentary anniversary night in the beautiful city of Lyon. We stocked up on stinky cheese, delicious local wine and warm, fresh bread -- and took it all back to our beautiful hotel room. The room was exceptional: a loft layout with plenty of room for 4 more people, even though it was just the 2 of us. Everything was great. But upon check out, they actually charged us the extremely high one-night hotel rate, claiming they didn’t have any record of it being my anniversary night booking. We paid it with our card and when we got back to the States, we called the card company. Here is where a potentially extremely frustrating situation turns to our favor... It was a total of a 5-minute phone call and with a very apologetic tone the IHG rep sent out a check with the total amount of the hotel stay. So, not only did we walk away with 10x points per $1 from “paying” the nightly rate with our IHG card, but we also got completely reimbursed with no hassle. We’re all human and no system works flawlessly, but it sure is nice when customer service actually caters to … customers).

Where IHG One Rewards Premier Fits In This Point Ecosystem

The IHG One Rewards Club Premier card is one of two personal cards offered by IHG. There are a few main differences, the first one being that the IHG One Rewards Travel card does not have an annual fee compared to the Premier card, which has a $99 annual fee. The Travel card does not have the one night free perk that the Premier card has, and the sign-up bonus of 80k points (on $2k in spending in the first 3 months) is significantly lower than the Premier’s current sign-up bonus of 140k. The only reason to get the no fee Travel card is if you don’t plan on keeping the card long term and don’t generally stay at IHG properties, but if you’re thinking you want to go with the Travel card, we’d recommend getting the Premier anyway for the higher sign-up bonus and the free night, then downgrading after the first year to the no fee Travel card. If you’re up against your 5/24, you may want to consider the IHG One Rewards Premier Business card, which has (almost) the exact same benefits as the personal Premier card but won’t count against your 5/24 status.

Personal Experience