Chicago Seminars – My Kimpton IHG integration presentation

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The 2017 Chicago Seminars was held this weekend at the Holiday Inn Elk Grove near the O’Hare airport.  It was the 8th year where award travel beginners and veterans gathered to discuss the latest tips, tricks, and trends in the miles and points world.  I was fortunate to be selected to present on Kimpton Hotel’s loyalty program, Kimpton Karma Rewards.

Related posts:

Kimpton Karma Rewards merging into IHG Rewards Club

As luck would have it, Friday morning I woke up to an email from Kimpton announcing that they would be merging the Karma Rewards loyalty program into IHG’s Rewards Club in early 2018.  Click here to read about the Kimpton/IHG integration.

I freaked out a bit because this news meant I had to completely redo and update my presentation.  Here’s my Tweet to Kimpton.

Unfortunately, there is still a bit of uncertainty even after reading the announcement, including that the exact date of integration is still a bit fuzzy.  Even though I’ve reached out to several contacts within Kimpton, the answer remains “early 2018.”

My best guess would be March, but who knows.

My Kimpton presentation at Chicago Seminars

Although this was my first presentation at the Chicago Seminars, it went really well.  There was an audience of about 50 people and there were plenty of questions from the crowd throughout.

Lee Kimpton presentation at Chicago Seminars

I was excited that so many people were interested in my favorite hotel brand, Kimpton.

Even though so much of the presentation had to be changed at the last minute, the presentation was well received.  And several of my blogger friends joked about it and gave me a hard time.  (Especially you, Rene.)

Click here or the image below if you’d like to download a PDF version of my Powerpoint.

Chicago Seminars Kimpton presentation cover page
Click here to download a PDF of the presentation.

I’d love to have your feedback on the presentation.  Please comment below with your feedback and questions about the presentation and Kimpton’s integration into IHG.

The Bald Thoughts

As we know, the only constant in award travel is “change.”  After IHG purchased Kimpton a couple of years ago, it was inevitable that Kimpton would eventually merge into IHG.  We just didn’t know when.  And because Kimpton was allowed to operate independently for so long without much involvement from IHG, we assumed that the integration was further into the future.  That all changed with Friday’s email.

Stay tuned for more details.  Plenty of other bloggers wrote posts about the changes,  but they mostly just regurgitated the press release.  As a true Kimpton loyalist with Inner Circle status, I’m working on getting some inside information that I can share and provide some strategy that will help you maximize Kimpton benefits going forward.


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