Grand Cayman Kimpton Seafire

We stayed at the Kimpton Seafire which is an IHG property on Seven Mile Beach. It was phenomenal in every way. But first, the points. I opened the IHG One Rewards Premier Personal Credit Card when it had an elevated offer of 175,000 points after you spend $3,000 within 3 months. The standard offer for this card is 140,000 points. This card automatically gives you Platinum Elite status which makes you automatically eligible for upgrades if rooms are available. And boy did we get an upgrade! More on that later.

The annual fee for this card is $99. Some benefits of this card are a $100 Global Entry credit and one free night certificate. That means that every year when you pay the annual fee, you get a free hotel night certificate (value up to 40,000 points) to use at whatever IHG property you choose. If your room costs more than 40,000 points, you can top it off buy paying for extra points. I talk more about purchasing points later in this post. I will keep this card every year because the free night certificate makes the $99 annual fee worth it to me.

Click here for more details on the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card.

**Note: The welcome offer will change periodically so the current welcome offer may not be the exact offer that we received when we signed up for this card.

I booked a 1 King Premium Oceanview Room. I recommend booking this over the North Sound view because you get a view of Seven Mile Beach. But as always, do what works for you. The room rate was 70,000 points per night. Another perk of the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card is when you book 3 nights, you get the fourth night free. So for 210,000 points total (the total points needed for 3 nights) we were able to stay for 4 nights.

I earned 175,000 points with the welcome offer and 3,000 points from the actual credit card spend which brought our points total to 178,000. I purchased the remaining 32,000 points from IHG when they were having a 100% bonus sale. The 100% bonus sale means you get “buy one, get one free” points. I did this purely by luck. Don’t stress about hitting an IHG sale. Look at the points you need to purchase to top off your stay, if that price works for you do it! I purchased 16,000 points for $184 and IHG gave me 16,000 additional points for free. So recap…

Just a little side note…because it can be confusing when you book it the first time…when you book your room it will slash through the 70,000 points price and make it 52,500 points per night. This is just the 210,000 points spread out over 4 nights to make the price 52,500 points per night. The 4th night free benefit is automatically added. You don’t need to do anything once you are logged into your IHG account.

IHG charges a resort fee of $80 per night. The list below explains what the resort fee covers. Our grand total for the 4 night reservation was 210,000 IHG points and $504 cash. The $504 was the $184 points purchase and the $320 resort fee for 4 nights. The total cash price to book our room would have been just over $6,400. Totally worth purchasing the extra 32,000 points and paying the resort fee in my opinion!

Daily Guest Amenities Fee of $80 includes:

Now…back to our upgrade. We were upgraded to a 1 Bedroom Oceanfront Suite. It was beautiful. The room was over 1,600 square feet! The main area consisted of a kitchen, dining room, living room, and half bath. The bedroom area had a king bed and full bathroom. The spacious bathroom with dual separate vanities and walk in shower was totally giving spa vibes. Our suite was handicap accessible so we did not have the large spa soaking tub but no complaints here. The panoramic views from the large wrap around balcony were the perfect place to have coffee each morning. This is one the main reasons I recommend an Oceanview Room over a North Sound View room. Coffee with a beach view is my happy place. The sun rose behind us so we could enjoy coffee without the sun beating down on us and we could watch the sunset from our balcony. Heaven! I want to note that the upgrade was really fun and luxurious. But if we had not been upgraded and remained in the room we booked, I am confident that we would have enjoyed our room just as much. The Kimpton Seafire hotel and staff are top notch which is ultimately why I can’t wait to return to Grand Cayman.