Good afternoon everyone.  Last week, Laura and I were in New York City for her Spring Break.  I had 2 IHG Free Night Certificates (40K capped FNC from my old Chase IHG Select Credit Card and a 40K uncapped FNC from my Chase IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card) that were expiring soon that I wanted to use.  We were staying for 4 nights, so I could have used the IHG 4th Night Free Benefit, but I wanted to use up those 2 IHG FNCs instead.  We decided to stay at the Crowne Plaza Times Square because the hotel is 1-2 blocks away from Times Square, surrounded by many musical theaters, very close to many subway lines (including the subway that goes from Manhattan to JFK (via the Jamaica Station), and walking distance to Central Park / Cruise Terminal / Rockefeller Center, etc.

I didn’t take screenshots during the booking process, but here is the booking strategy I used which I will explain below.  To get started, I searched for 4 nights to ensure that there was availability every night using points.  I clicked the Select Hotel button to view more details.

The default option is the IHG 4th Night Free Benefit which brought the blended cost down to 24,250 points per night.  To view the nightly award prices, I clicked the (i) icon next to Reward Nights.

As you can see, the total was 97,000 points with the IHG 4th Night Free Benefit, but I couldn’t see the points price for the last night.

To get around this issue, I searched for the first 2 nights, which had a blended cost of 26,500 points per night.  Once again, I clicked the (i) icon next to Reward Nights to see the nightly prices.

The first night was 22,000 points and the second night was 31,000 points.

I then searched for the last 2 nights, which had a blended cost of 42,000 points per night.  And again, I clicked the (i) icon next to Reward Nights to see the nightly prices.

The third night was 44,000 points and the fourth night was 40,000 points.

Now that I figured out the prices for each night, here was my booking plan:

• Night 1: 22,000 points – book with IHG points
• Night 2: 31,000 points – book with IHG points
• Night 3: 44,000 points – book with 40K uncapped FNC  + 4,000 IHG points
• Night 4: 40,000 points – book with 40K capped FNC

At the end of the day, I had 4 separate 1 night stays booked back to back.  This allowed me to keep an eye on the nightly prices and rebook if the price dropped.  This is exactly what happened with one of my reservations.  I originally booked it for 25,000 points.  9 days later, the price dropped to 23,000 points, so I cancelled and rebooked that reservation.  The next day, the price dropped to 22,000 points, so I cancelled and rebooked that reservation.  And again the next day, the price dropped to 20,000 points, so I cancelled and rebooked that reservation.  The stay was 3 days in the future, but the price continued to drop.  I noticed that some of the prices went up and some went down over the days.  If you have multiple 1 night reservations, you can easily rebook if the price drops.  But you may have an issue if you have multiple nights booked in the same reservation.  Some nights could go up and some could go down and you wouldn’t be able to lock in lower prices without also getting locked into the higher prices too.  This is why having 1 night reservations comes in handy.

The hotel is in a great location in NYC.  Due to my IHG Platinum Status (from my Chase IHG Premier Credit Card), we were able to check in early (around 12pm) when other non-elites were told that their room wouldn’t be available for a few more hours. We got a corner room on a high floor (34th floor out of 45 floors) with views of the Cruise Terminal and Hudson River (we saw 2 cruise ships depart which was cool).  The biggest downside is the $40.16 daily destination fee that includes unlimited wifi, local calls, and international calls; but doesn’t include any breakfast or dining credit.  If you have any questions about this hotel or about booking multiple IHG reservations, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!