How To Cancel an IHG Hotel Reservation [Points or Cash Booking]

There is nothing worse than having to cancel a trip that you’ve been looking forward to. Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that we all have to deal with at times. But if you aren’t aware of the hotel’s cancellation policy, or have booked a restrictive rate, the disappointment of canceling your trip can turn into an expensive headache as well.

If you have a reservation with IHG Hotels & Resorts, or are planning to make one in the future, and need to know all of the details around its cancellation policy — this is the post for you! Here’s all the information you need to navigate the IHG cancellation policy.

IHG Cancellation Policy

Reservations Made With Cash

Depending on the type of rate that you’ve booked, IHG will allow you to cancel a reservation up to 24 hours to 72 hours until your check-in time. If the free cancellation time window for your booking rate has passed, you can still cancel your reservation, but you’ll have to pay a fee equal to a 1-night stay.

If you make your reservation on a non-refundable rate, then unfortunately you will not be able to receive a refund if you need to cancel. So while non-refundable rates are usually cheaper, what you gain in savings you lose in flexibility. This is why it is incredibly important to understand the cancellation policy for the rate you book prior to booking it!

The Cancellation Policy for the Rate

When it comes to booking a refundable rate, you have 2 options to choose from, Book Now, Pay Later, and Best Flexible Rate.

Book Now, Pay Later rates allows you to cancel and get a full refund for your stay as long as you do so more than 72 hours before your scheduled check-in time. Again, if you need to cancel with less than 72 hours till check-in, you can still do so for a 1-night fee.

If you book a Best Flexible Rate you can cancel your reservation up to 24 hours before you’re scheduled to check-in to receive a full refund. This is the most flexible booking option by far, but it is usually always the most expensive as well.

Hot Tip: If you’re an IHG One Rewards member you can get a discount on your reservation by booking a Member Exclusive Rate, which is available for each individual rate option.

Reservations Made With Points

If you’ve made a reservation using your IHG One Rewards points, or plan to do so in the future, you can cancel your reservation up to 24 hours ahead of your scheduled check-in time and receive a full refund. When doing so, all of the points that you used to make your reservation will be deposited back into your IHG One Rewards account.

Points + Cash bookings can also be canceled 24 hours ahead of your scheduled check-in time for a full refund, but the cash portion of your reservation will not be refunded back in cash. Instead, you’ll receive additional IHG One Rewards points. How does IHG determine how many points you’ll receive for the cash portion? It is based on the difference of what a full award stay would have cost. So, a Points + Cash rate was 8,500 points plus $60, and an award night would have cost 15,000 points, then you will receive 15,000 points as a refund.

As with cash reservations, if you need to cancel with less than 24 hours remaining until you check-in, you can still do so but will be charged a 1-night fee as a penalty. So if you have a 3-night stay that costs 60,000 points, 40,000 points will be refunded to you, and 20,000 will be kept to cover the fee.

How To Cancel an IHG Reservation

Canceling your IHG reservation is pretty straightforward! Just follow these steps to do so:

Step 1

Head to the IHG website, sign in to your IHG One Rewards account, and then click on Stays and Events.

Step 2

From there, all of your upcoming stays will be viewable under Upcoming Stays. If for some reason your reservation is not showing, you can enter your confirmation number, along with your last name, and the website will perform a search for it.

Step 3

Once you’ve located the reservation that you want to cancel, you then just need to click Cancel, then Confirm. After that, your reservation will officially be canceled and you’ll receive an email that confirms all the details of the cancellation, including any refunds that you might be entitled to.

Hot Tip: If you run into any issues regarding your cancellation, or are having an issue locating a missing reservation, contact the IHG customer service team and they will get it resolved for you.

Changing the Reservation Dates

For those that just want to change their reservation instead of canceling it, you’ll go through the exact same process when logging in to your account and navigating to your reservations, but then you’ll want to select Change instead of Cancel. After that, you’ll need to select what dates you want to change your reservation to, click Confirm, and then you’ll receive a confirmation email indicating that you’re all set.

If the new dates that you have selected are more expensive than your previous booking, then you will need to pay for the difference. This applies to both cash and points stays since IHG uses a dynamic pricing model for its award nights.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, no one wants to have to cancel their trip, and you especially don’t want to have to deal with headaches when canceling to find out that the rate you booked was non-refundable. This is why it is important to understand a hotel’s cancellation policies in advance, so you can decide what makes the most sense for you.

When it comes to IHG hotels, if you’re certain that you won’t need to cancel, then you can save yourself some money by booking a non-refundable rate. Otherwise, you might want to go with the added flexibility of the Book Now, Pay Later or Best Flexible Rate options so you know for sure that you’re covered if you need to cancel.