Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  My friend Brian just told me that it is possible to use IHG Rewards Points and IHG Free Night Certificates to book rooms at Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties (the timeshare and vacation rental wing of IHG).  I never knew this was possible, but Brian sent me a list of tips in order to book the reservation.  Long story short, you can book rooms online with IHG Points (with all points or with Cash and Points), but if you want to use a Free Night Certificate, you will need to call IHG Reservations (877-318-5890).

To see the 28 Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties, you can view the map here.  This map is not super helpful, but don’t worry, I created a list of the 28 properties below.

Here are the 28 Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties, listed alphabetically by the name of the resort.  (This page is not very helpful either.)

Since the first 2 pages are not very helpful, I created this table with the 28 Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties sorted alphabetically by state and then alphabetically by city.  Click the resort names to see more information about each resort.

State	City	Resort Name
Arizona	Scottsdale	Scottsdale Resort
Florida	Cape Canaveral	Cape Canaveral Beach Resort
Florida	Marco Island	Sunset Cove Resort
Florida	Orlando	Orange Lake Resort
Florida	Orlando	Orlando Breeze Resort
Florida	Panama City Beach	Panama City Beach Resort
Georgia	Clarkesville	Apple Mountain Resort
Illinois	Sheridan	Fox River Resort
Louisiana	New Orleans	New Orleans Resort
Massachusetts	South Lee	Oak n’ Spruce Resort
Missouri	Branson	Holiday Hills Resort
Missouri	De Soto	Timber Creek Resort
Missouri	Kimberling City	Ozark Mountain Resort
Nevada	Genoa	David Walley’s Resort
Nevada	Las Vegas	Desert Club Resort
Nevada	Stateline	Tahoe Ridge Resort
South Carolina	Myrtle Beach	South Beach Resort
Tennessee	Gatlinburg	Smoky Mountain Resort
Texas	Canyon Lake	Hill Country Resort
Texas	Conroe	Piney Shores Resort
Texas	Flint	Lake o’ the Woods Resort
Texas	Flint	Villages Resort
Texas	Galveston	Galveston Beach Resort
Texas	Galveston	Galveston Seaside Resort
Texas	Holly Lake Ranch	Holly Lake Resort
Vermont	Brownsville	Mount Ascutney Resort
Virginia	Williamsburg	Williamsburg Resort
Wisconsin	Lake Geneva	Lake Geneva Resort

Brian booked the Fox River Resort in Sheridan, Illinois, which looks like a very family friendly resort.  I decided to use this property as the basis for this post.  There is a Search Availability button in the lower right corner, but I will show you why that is not the way to go.

Under Rate Preferences, there are only 4 options available – no IHG Rewards Points or IHG Free Night Certificates checkboxes.

Going down this path only shows you the various paid rates available, but no IHG Rewards Points or IHG Free Night Certificates options.

The next approach you might take to book the Fox River Resort in Sheridan, Illinois, is by searching on the IHG website.  Unfortunately, that resort does not show up in the list.

The correct (and only) way to book a Holiday Inn Club Vacations property with IHG Points is to go to the main Holiday Inn Club Vacations website.  From there, you must select the resort from the drop down menu, then pick your dates, and then select Rewards Nights under the Rate Preference.

You will then see which room types are available using IHG Points.  If the rate is 40,000 IHG Points or less, you can use a Free Night Certificate, but you will need to call IHG Reservations (877-318-5890).  If you want to book with IHG Points or with Points + Cash, you can do that online.

As you can see, there is no option to book with a Free Night Certificate online, you are only able to book with points online.  Here are the various Points + Cash rates.

As mentioned earlier, I have 3 Free Night Certificates in my account, but there is no way to use them to book a stay online.  You have to call IHG Reservations (877-318-5890).

Brian called IHG Reservations and was able to use 3 Free Night Certificates.  Here is a copy of his confirmation details.

Here are the tips and tricks Brian shared with me:

• IHG may play games with availability based on check-in and check-out dates and not all rooms in a category will be available on points. Also, I looked at a few other resorts and found the room-type available on points varies from resort to resort – some places it is a 2-bedroom, but, other places, it is a 1-bedroom.
• Some properties have a minimum stay requirement per reservation (for example, the property we booked has a 3-night minimum). So, if you search for fewer nights than the minimum, it won’t show any results and will, instead, show non-HICV properties in the area.
• Availability to book with points is mixed – for better and worse. For better – the resort we booked had the 2-bedrooms available for 35k pts/nt (even though it has single-King and two-Queen “standard” rooms). For worse – availability on points seems more limited than some other IHG properties.
• I’ve heard there might be a bit of sales pitch for HICV involved at the front desk at check-in.
• Once I found a room (a 2-bedroom “villa” with a full kitchen, in our case) available on points (for 40k or less per night) for the stay I wanted, I could not find a way to use the certificates online to book.  So, I called IHG Rewards Club at 1-877-318-5890 and spoke with a very helpful rep.
• The phone rep stated that, because of the minimum stay requirement per reservation, the rewards member needed to have the full number of certs required in their own account (so, no splitting nights between my certs and my wife’s certs because that would require separate reservations). Luckily, my wife had 4 certs (but, now we still have to deal with my cert expiring 12/31/21).
• The phone rep also stated that one may need enough points for the entire booking to see availability in the search. However, I’m not sure this is true because it showed me points + cash rates that would require less than the full points rate.
• In the end, booking over the phone was really smooth and took less than ten minutes.

I really appreciate Brian for sharing his tips and his experience booking a Holiday Inn Club Vacations property with me.  If you have IHG Points or Free Night Certificates, don’t forget about Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties.  It looks like you can find some great deals at some of these properties.  If you have any questions about the searching or booking process, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!