IHG Tokyo Bay 30k points june 2025
Sep 18, 2024 | 5:12 pm
#16
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: LAX/SFO
Programs: AS 100k, BA GGL, UA 1k, DL DM, AC SE, B6 Mosaic4, Hyatt/Hilton/Wyndham/IHG Diamond, Marriot Ti
Posts: 1,459
I wish people wouldn't make discouraging posts like this one. It's corrosive to FT. Let everyone post their finds!
In this particular case, you ridiculed an excellent deal. Let me explain: Booking at end-of-schedule yielded some inexplicably low points rates at this hotel. A few months before the OP posted this, I was able to book this hotel for weekends (which are expensive in Japan) in late March and early April (cherry blossoms = absolute peak season). For those who hold the right portfolio of Chase IHG cards, you get the 4th night of a points booking for free, and a 10% points discount. All told, I am paying 83,000 points for 4 nights at IC Tokyo Bay on dates that currently run $583 a night (this is likely to go up as the hotel sells out). IHG is pretty aggressive in selling points at a rate of .5cpp, so I'm paying $415 for 4 nights. That's just over $100 a night, a pretty sweet 80% discount over cash rates. And don't tell me that $100 isn't a deal -- I invite you to find me something comparable in Tokyo on those dates.
This trick also works (used to work) at other IHG hotels -- I booked IC Phu Quoc over NYE at 18k points/night (vs. $400), HI Munich during Oktoberfest at 20k points/night (vs. 380), IC Estoril under 20k points/night (vs. 450), Indigo Paris at 27k/night, IC Osaka during Sakura 2023 at 36k points (vs. $800), etc etc.
Yes, I'm still paying $100-ish a night at these places. But 80%-ish discounts at locations I want to visit on my desired dates are pretty good compared to the usual "night of October 11th at HIX Smallville at $12" deals posted here. And even those have been drying up. The days of mistakes that allowed booking stays of meaningful length on one's desired dates at LM Khao Lak for a handful of Ugandan Shillings or the Presidential suite at Conrad Bangkok for the equivalent of a bowl of pad thai or MO Tokyo at a very favorable 1:1 JPY:USD exchange rate are long gone (in fact, looking at your join date, happened before your time here). In fact, I don't think I've booked any of the deals posted here in a decade. By comparison, the IC Tokyo Bay deal is excellent, and if people posted more of this stuff, others might recognize a pattern and find something useful. But because people like the OP are disparaged rather than thanked, these finds no longer get posted.
In this particular case, you ridiculed an excellent deal. Let me explain: Booking at end-of-schedule yielded some inexplicably low points rates at this hotel. A few months before the OP posted this, I was able to book this hotel for weekends (which are expensive in Japan) in late March and early April (cherry blossoms = absolute peak season). For those who hold the right portfolio of Chase IHG cards, you get the 4th night of a points booking for free, and a 10% points discount. All told, I am paying 83,000 points for 4 nights at IC Tokyo Bay on dates that currently run $583 a night (this is likely to go up as the hotel sells out). IHG is pretty aggressive in selling points at a rate of .5cpp, so I'm paying $415 for 4 nights. That's just over $100 a night, a pretty sweet 80% discount over cash rates. And don't tell me that $100 isn't a deal -- I invite you to find me something comparable in Tokyo on those dates.
This trick also works (used to work) at other IHG hotels -- I booked IC Phu Quoc over NYE at 18k points/night (vs. $400), HI Munich during Oktoberfest at 20k points/night (vs. 380), IC Estoril under 20k points/night (vs. 450), Indigo Paris at 27k/night, IC Osaka during Sakura 2023 at 36k points (vs. $800), etc etc.
Yes, I'm still paying $100-ish a night at these places. But 80%-ish discounts at locations I want to visit on my desired dates are pretty good compared to the usual "night of October 11th at HIX Smallville at $12" deals posted here. And even those have been drying up. The days of mistakes that allowed booking stays of meaningful length on one's desired dates at LM Khao Lak for a handful of Ugandan Shillings or the Presidential suite at Conrad Bangkok for the equivalent of a bowl of pad thai or MO Tokyo at a very favorable 1:1 JPY:USD exchange rate are long gone (in fact, looking at your join date, happened before your time here). In fact, I don't think I've booked any of the deals posted here in a decade. By comparison, the IC Tokyo Bay deal is excellent, and if people posted more of this stuff, others might recognize a pattern and find something useful. But because people like the OP are disparaged rather than thanked, these finds no longer get posted.
