How I Got a Free 4-Night Stay at InterContinental Boston Using Credit Card Points

After celebrating New Years staying in Times Square Hilton Tempo (all with points!), we took an Amtrak train to Boston.

In Boston, we stayed at the InterContinental Boston, a luxury hotel beside the Boston waterfront, a short walk from downtown Boston. From all our hotel experiences in the US so far, this was one of the most luxurious ones.

Here are some photos from our NYC-Boston trip, if you are interested. Instead, if you are interested in the credit card redemption strategy I used, keep reading.

In this blog post, I will show you how I redeemed IHG points to make my 4-nights stay free, what credit cards I used, and the strategies (one with credit card, another with a 55% cash discount) I would recommend for you, if you decide to do the same.

Let’s get started.

Cash Price vs Points Redeemed

The cash price for a 4-nights stay in InterContinental Boston the first week of January was $1,320.

Instead, I used 144,000 IHG One Rewards points and paid $0 out of pocket in cash (more on this later).

So, let’s run some numbers.

Cash Price = $1,320

Points Redeemed = 144,000

Cents-per-point = 0.9 CPP

Although it’s below the “standard” 1 CPP, given IHG points are valued by TPG at 0.5 cents, I would call this a very good redemption.

The deal becomes even sweeter when you see how I accumulated such a stockpile of IHG points!

Credit Cards That Made It Possible

I signed up for the Chase IHG Premier card with a sign-up-bonus of 140,000 IHG points after spending $3K in 3 months.

I put all my regular spending - dining, groceries, gas, travel, retail, etc - on the IHG Premier card for 2 months. That was enough to hit the bonus!

The card comes with some great benefits. Let’s start with the multipliers.

5X Dining

5X Gas

5X Travel

26X IHG Purchases

3X Everything Else

That’s an impressive set of reward multipliers. However, the benefits on the card makes having it a no-brainer.

4th Night Free with Points (If you book 4 nights, you pay for 3)

Platinum Elite Status (second highest level, comes with room upgrade when available)

Anniversary Free Night (free night certificate every year from your second year)

The sign-up-bonus (140K) and points earned through regular spending (20K) was more than enough to cover the 144K cost for this trip.

That’s how this trip cost me nothing.

Now, if you want to do the same, I recommend 2 approaches.

Approach 1: Through Credit Card

You can easily replicate my strategy.

The current sign-up-bonus of the IHG Premier Card gives you 4 free night certificates after spending $3,000 in 3 months. If you sign up for this offer, you don’t even need to do the points calculation. You can just redeem your 4 certificates for 4 nights using IHG’s website or mobile app.

If the above offer is not available anymore, the standard offer will also get you there. That’s the 140K offer I mentioned above.

There’s another approach to accumulate the 140K points (will talk about it below). However, the reason I still recommend going this credit card route is to take advantage of Platinum Elite that comes just by having the credit card.

Being Platinum Elite members, we got upgraded to a bigger (and higher floor) room with a view of the Boston skyline. We also received free chocolates every night and an early-check-in/late-checkout.

However, if you are unwilling to sign up for another credit card, I have another strategy that will give you close to 50% cash discount.

Approach 2: Buy IHG Points

In general, you can always buy IHG points at 1CPP. So, for $1,000 you get 100K points.

However, IHG runs a 50% promotion on buying points very often (like once every other month).
During the promotion, your $1,000 will get you 200K points, instead of a mere 100K.

Instead of paying cash for the 4-nights stay, you can buy the points and then redeem for nights. Let’s run some numbers to see how big of a discount you get with this approach.

I will do my calculation based on prices for a 4-nights stay in May 2025.

Cash Price = $3,000

IHG Points Needed = 68,250 * 4 = 273,000

Cash to Purchase Points = $1,365

That’s a 55% discount over cash price!

Summary

Using IHG points you can spend 4-nights in InterContinental Boston either for free (signing up for a credit card) or for 55% off the cash price. Whichever you pick, that’s a massive saving!

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