The IHG lounge membership used<\/em> to work as follows:<\/p>\n By carefully utilizing these rules, you could get a lounge membership for up to 24 months by timing when you earned and selected your 40 or 70-night milestone reward.<\/p>\n For example, say you reached the 40- or 70-night threshold on November 1, 2023. You then had 90 days to select your Milestone Reward.<\/p>\n By waiting until January 1, 2024 to select your lounge membership, the lounge membership would then be valid for the whole of 2024 plus all of 2025 — giving you 24 months of lounge membership!<\/p>\n That's precisely the process that AwardWallet Editor-In-Chief JT Genter took in early 2024 to get almost 24 months of IHG lounge membership:<\/p>\n The big change is that from 2025, the lounge membership will only be valid from the date it was earned plus 1 year. This eliminates the ability to get a lounge membership for 24 months. For instance, take the above example under the new rules.<\/p>\n Earning the milestone on November 1, 2023, would have only given you membership if selected for the remainder of 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n Clearly, this is how IHG intended the system to work. The previous rule set incentivized members to stay away from their milestone earnings. However, the new rule set incentivizes members to stay as early as possible and to earn the milestone. Now, the earlier you earn and select your milestone reward, the longer you can enjoy the lounge membership.<\/p>\n On one hand, this change from IHG is frustrating and reduces a benefit for those that carefully followed the rules. However, you can\u2019t blame IHG for making this change. It makes no sense for a loyalty program to offer a benefit that actually incentivizes members to stay away from their hotels.<\/p>\n Imagine an airline program putting a rule in place where you earned no miles from January to June and double miles from June to December. Members would avoid flying in the first half of the year!<\/p>\n So, while frustrating to those of us who strategically planned to optimize this loophole, the new rules make sense for the program. And IHG regulars should still be able to take advantage of the lounge membership for at least a year and some.<\/p>\n Page Contents<\/p> IHG quietly closed a loophole that let IHG One Rewards members earn a lounge membership for up to 24 months by timing when they earned and selected a milestone reward. Here’s what you need to know about this change and how it will affect your Milestone Rewards selections in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":193015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":null,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[12069],"tags":[12700],"coauthors":[36383],"class_list":["post-193010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ihg-one-rewards"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193010"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193180,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193010\/revisions\/193180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193010"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=193010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IHG-40-Nights-milestone-awards.jpg\")
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IHG-70-Nights-milestone-awards.jpg\")
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/awardwallet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IHG-Annual-Lounge-Membership-thru-12-31-2025-300x180.png\")
How The IHG Lounge Membership Will Work From 2025<\/span><\/h2>\n
Our Take<\/span><\/h2>\n