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The best travel credit cards offer lucrative sign-up bonuses and strong ongoing benefits that can make your travels extremely affordable. A quick scan of a card’s ongoing perks helps you to assess how much value you’ll receive from it.

But spontaneous promotions occasionally materialize to save cardholders even more.

For a limited time, those with the IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card or the IHG® Rewards Club Traveler Credit Card get early access to an IHG award sale for bookings between one and three nights. If you’ve been planning to book an IHG hotel, now is the time to do it. This sale will be released to all IHG members soon, so award availability at your desired hotel may quickly deplete — especially if it’s a popular IHG hotel like the Holiday Inn Resort Montego Bay All-Inclusive or the Six Senses Maldives.

Here’s what you need to know about this deal.

IHG cardholders get early access to IHG’s promotional award sale

If you hold either the IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card or the IHG® Rewards Club Traveler Credit Card, you will get 20% off award stays at IHG hotels when you complete your booking by April 5, 2022. To find the sale, simply log into your IHG online account.

The sale will expand to non-cardmembers in the near future, but cardmembers get the first crack. That’s no small advantage — some popular IHG hotels are already extremely difficult to book, and this award sale will only decrease award availability.

There are two catches to this sale:

• Only stays through May 25, 2022, qualify
• Only stays between one and three nights qualify

That second bullet is a killer, because a benefit of the above IHG cards is that you’ll receive the fourth night free during stays lasting four or more consecutive award nights. In other words, you won’t be able to “stack” a fourth award night free with this 20% discount.

However, this promotion will be a great help to anyone with a free anniversary night offered by the IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card and the legacy IHG Select card. This free night is valid for hotels costing 40,000 points or less per night. But with this 20% award sale, you can book an award stay that would otherwise cost 50,000 points per night — as a 20% discount will bring your final price to 40,000 points.

Read more: Best hotel credit cards with free anniversary nights

Note that beginning March 24, 2022, you’ll be able to use your free night certificate in tandem with IHG points to book any IHG hotel, no matter the award price. 

Insider estimates that IHG points are worth 0.7 cents toward hotel stays, on average. A 20% discount means IHG points are worth 0.875 cents, on average, during this sale.

Easily earn IHG points with credit cards

There are two IHG credit cards currently available to new applicants, and they offer significant sign-up bonuses:

Opening one (or both) of these cards is the easiest way to inject your IHG loyalty account with several hundred dollars in value.

IHG is also a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner — but we do not recommend converting Chase points into IHG points. Chase points are inherently more valuable, and there are far better travel partners to use them with.

Read more: How to earn and use IHG points

Bottom line

IHG cardholders get early access to a 20% off IHG award sale. This sale lasts through April 5, and your stay must end by May 25, 2022, to qualify.