Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Last week (Thanksgiving Week), Laura and I spent 4 days in New York City.  We stayed at the conveniently located Crowne Plaza Times Square IHG Hotel which is close to Times Square, the Theater District, the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, and several subway stations (which you can take to JFK via Jamaica Station and the AirTrain).  We stayed at this hotel last March during Laura’s Spring Break, so we knew the area well.

I used 2 IHG Free Night Certificates from my Chase IHG Business Credit Card and the Chase IHG Select Credit Card (no longer available) along with IHG Points.  Nightly award prices vary dramatically (see the nightly prices for award stays in December 2024), but I closely tracked the nightly prices over a few months and rebooked my stays a few times whenever the award price dropped.  Whenever I book a hotel stay of more than 1 night, I always book my stays in 1 night increments since it is much easier to cancel and rebook 1 night at a time.  At check in, the front desk agent linked the stays together and kept us in the same room for the duration of the stay.  You could also call, email, or text the hotel ahead of time to let them know about the multiple back to back stays.

Here are my planning notes for this 4 night stay:

• I started planning the NYC trip in mid August for a stay during Thanksgiving Week.  At that time, we didn’t know what our Thanksgiving plans were yet, so I booked several 1 night award stays back to back throughout Thanksgiving Week.
• At the beginning of the planning process, our flight was going to land at JFK late on Saturday night (11/23) and we were going to stay at an airport hotel near JFK.  Luckily, toward the end of October, I was able to switch to a different flight once that price dropped and we would land at JFK around 5pm.  At that point, I booked the Saturday night (11/23) stay using an IHG Free Night Certificate + 38K IHG points.  That price never went down over the coming weeks, but I did see prices jump to over 100K a few times.
• For Sunday night (11/24), I originally booked the stay using my capped 40K IHG Free Night Certificate since the hotel was exactly 40K IHG Points.  3 months later, the price finally dropped to 32K IHG Points, so I cancelled the capped 40K IHG Free Night Certificate stay and booked with 32K IHG Points.
• For Monday night (11/25), the price dropped from 37K to 34K to 31K over a 3 month period, so I canceled and rebooked that stay a few times.
• Lastly, for Tuesday night (11/26), I originally booked the stay using an IHG Free Night Certificate + 26K IHG Points.  2 weeks later, the price dropped to 47K, so I cancelled and rebooked with the IHG Free Night Certificate + 7K IHG Points.  Then 2 weeks later, it dropped to 45K.  Then 3 days later, it dropped to 35K.  2 months after that, the price dropped again to 34K and I decided to use my capped 40K IHG Free Night Certificate since that was the most expensive stay where the certificate could be used.

I hope the chart above helps to illustrate the price drops and my play by play description explains how I booked the stays.  If I booked my 3 nightly stays on 8/12 and never checked again, I would have paid a total of 143K IHG Points.  But by constantly checking, cancelling, and rebooking, I was able to get those 3 nights for a total of 97K IHG Points.  Funny enough, my capped 40K IHG Free Night Certificate posted to my account on 11/19 and I immediately booked the 11/26 stay.  The $49 annual fee from that credit card finally posted on 12/1, about a week after I used the Free Night Certificate.

Please let me know if you have any questions about my stay or about the process of booking, cancelling, and rebooking stays.  Thanks for reading and have a great day.