I’m sure many of you have been in this situation with your jobs before: a last minute meeting comes up or you have a big project due, so you end up working late. The last thing you want to do after working a 10+ hour day is commute back to your home if it is an hour away or further, only to have to drive back in 10 hours.

IGH PointBreaks may be the solution! If you can find an IHG PointBreaks hotel pretty close to work, for only 5,000 IHG points you can book a free night! You can outright buy these points for about $35, which in some cases could be more than worth the commute.

PointBreaks hotels change every two months and are very rarely high-end IHG properties, but at 5,000 points it is usually a pretty good value.

In my case, I do live about an hour away from work. If I am going to go home only to sleep and turn around again and come right back, I do see it as worth it to spend 5,000 points in order to have those two extra hours of time on already very busy days. Especially once I consider that I spend about $15 in gas round trip (not even saying anything about wear-and-tear), that extra $20 (that the points could be purchased for… note that I do not actually buy points very often) is more than worth having 2 hours of time to either sleep a little more or spend time doing other things that I want or need to do. It seems that the area near where I work often has a PointBreaks hotel, so this is a pretty solid strategy for me, but even when they don’t I have booked other hotels based on the promotions they are running, and it has worked out great so far!

So, if you spend a few hours or more a week commuting to work, consider getting a room at a nearby hotel to give yourself a couple extra hours to yourself every once in a while… and take advantage of PointBreaks or hotel promotions while you’re at it!