Hotel programs
IHG Destined, and what it actually adds to a stay
IHG Destined turns up next to a hotel rate without ever explaining itself. Here’s what the program includes, where the published accounts of it disagree with each other, and what I check before anything is held.
It’s one of the programs I can place a reservation into. One hotel stay on its own is enough to be worth doing, and further down I say why, and what I still can’t help with.
Bring the property and your dates. Fifteen minutes is enough to tell you whether it participates and what the credit is there.
The program
What IHG Destined is
IHG Destined is IHG’s program for luxury travel advisors. It was previously called the IHG Luxury and Lifestyle Program, so if you’ve seen that name somewhere, it’s the same thing under new branding.
You can’t join it and you can’t find it as a rate. IHG opens it to a limited set of agencies, and the benefits attach when an advisor with access places the reservation. Reserving direct, redeeming points, or going through a general travel site doesn’t qualify.
The hotels
Which properties it covers
Six brands sit inside the program: Six Senses, Regent, InterContinental, Kimpton, Hotel Indigo and Vignette Collection.
Participation is decided property by property. A brand being on that list doesn’t mean your hotel is, which is the first thing worth checking.
The published benefits are consistent. A one hundred dollar property credit, once per stay. Daily breakfast. A room upgrade, subject to availability. Early check-in and late check-out, subject to availability. A welcome amenity.
Where the accounts differ
What the published accounts disagree about
Two things, and the first one can lose you the whole benefit.
Minimum stay. One published account says there’s no minimum. Another says most reservations need only a single night. A third says some lower-priced properties require two nights to qualify at all. Those can’t all be right, and if the third one is, a one-night stay at the wrong property earns none of this.
The credit. A hundred dollars is the figure quoted everywhere. I’ve also seen it reported lower at some of the lifestyle brands, which would make sense and isn’t something I’m willing to state as fact on the strength of one source.
So I confirm both against your property and your dates before anything is held.
Your rate
What you pay, and what you don’t
The room rate is the rate. It doesn’t go up because I place the reservation, and the credit, the breakfast and the upgrade are paid for by IHG. There’s a fuller explanation on the hotel programs page.
What you pay me is one hundred dollars for a stay that stands on its own. That buys the checking: whether your property actually participates, what the credit is there, and whether your dates clear the minimum nobody agrees on.
The credit here is a hundred dollars, so on most stays you’re square before you’ve had breakfast. If the stay sits inside a route I’m planning, it’s part of that planning investment and I don’t charge it twice.
Even one hotel
Yes, even for one hotel
If the whole of what you want is three nights at a Six Senses and nothing else, that’s worth a message. The rate is the same whether you go direct or come through me, and going direct is how you arrive without the credit, without breakfast, and in the room they had left.
What I’m still not useful for is a flight on its own, or a property I’ve got no program access to. Reserve those yourself and keep the money.
Next
Who you’d be talking to
Jessica Clark, an independent travel advisor just north of Seattle, working with queer and allied travelers worldwide.
I do this myself. There’s no booking desk behind me and nobody else touches your reservation. If there’s an IHG property in something you’re planning, or if that property is the whole of what you’re planning, fifteen minutes is enough to establish whether it participates, what the credit actually is there, and whether Destined is even the right program for it. Sometimes it isn’t, and I’ll tell you so.
Or see the rest of the hotel programs I can place a reservation into.