Planning ahead for your IHG One Rewards points
Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for IHG Hotels & Resorts points
(General customer service)
While IHG Hotels & Resorts does allow post-death transfer of points, lifetime planning gives the account holder more control over how points are shared and used.
IHG One Rewards allows members to transfer points to other program members during their lifetime. Fees may apply, but this is a direct way to move points to family members while you are alive.
How to protect your IHG One Rewards points
6 steps for managing your IHG One Rewards points during your lifetime:
Family sharing
IHG One Rewards points can be transferred between members in 1,000-point increments. Standard members pay a fee of $5 per 1,000 points transferred. Diamond Elite members and IHG Business Rewards members (with a qualifying event in the current or previous calendar year) may transfer points without paying the per-point fee, but are capped at 100,000 points transferred per calendar year and a maximum of six transfers per year as of the December 2025 policy update (the prior free-transfer cap for Diamond Elites was 500,000 points per calendar year). Receiving members may accept up to 500,000 points per calendar year. Both accounts must be at least 30 days old. Members can also purchase points (subject to an annual cap published by IHG) and gift points to other members through the IHG points portal. Points can be converted to airline partner miles, most commonly at a 5:1 ratio (5,000 IHG points to 1,000 airline miles), with processing times of up to several weeks.
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).
An inventory listing the IHG One Rewards account lets a fiduciary identify it and act on it through the operator's official channels.
IHG One Rewards does not support beneficiary designations. Unlike financial accounts, there is no way to name a beneficiary on this type of account.
Sources
Data sourced from IHG Hotels & Resorts primary sources (6 pages reviewed). How we research.
(General customer service)
