How to protect your IHG One Rewards points while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on an IHG One Rewards account. While the account holder is alive, IHG Hotels & Resorts allows transfers to another member and transfers to a partner program.
IHG Hotels & Resorts' terms provide a path for IHG One Rewards points after a death, and what the account holder sets up in advance decides how smoothly that path runs. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on an IHG One Rewards account. While the account holder is alive, IHG Hotels & Resorts allows transfers to another member and transfers to a partner program.
How to protect your IHG One Rewards points
Naming who acts after a death
- Designation
There is no way to name a beneficiary on an IHG One Rewards account in advance; at death the Terms move points into the IHG One Rewards accounts of the member's beneficiaries.1
What IHG Hotels & Resorts's terms say about sharing and transfers3
- Transfers to another member
Points may be transferred between two specifically designated member accounts. An authorization to transfer points form must be submitted, and the member authorizing the transfer is charged $5 US per 1,000 points transferred.1
Once the authorization is processed, the transferring member gives up all rights to the transferred points, with no cancellations or refunds.1
Points can be transferred to friends and family in 1,000-point increments.2
- Transfers to a partner program
Points can be converted to Loyalty Program Partner rewards only in block increments for specified partners. The partner's own terms set how many IHG points a reward takes, and posting can take up to 6 weeks.1
Once converted, the points cannot be re-converted or refunded.1
- Expiry and activity requirements
Club level points expire when the account has had no earn or redeem transaction for twelve months or longer. Use of the one night per year given to IHG One Rewards credit card holders does not count as earn or redeem activity.1
Elite members' points do not expire as long as Elite level membership is maintained.1
Not in IHG One Rewards's published guidance2
- Pooling with family
- Family plans and household sharing
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from IHG Hotels & Resorts primary sources (4 pages reviewed). How we research.
IHG One Rewards customer support
IHG One Rewards Customer Care (United States and Canada)
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