Air India and IHG Launch Maharaja Club Loyalty Tie-Up

A frequent-flyer program that now follows guests into hotel lobbies

Air India and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) Hotels & Resorts announced a loyalty partnership this month that links the airline's Maharaja Club frequent-flyer program directly to IHG One Rewards, IHG's loyalty scheme spanning more than 7,100 hotels in over 100 countries. The tie-up, announced on September 4, 2026, and covered in trade and hospitality press through the following week, lets members of either program earn and redeem points across both — a step that pushes Air India's revamped loyalty currency beyond the cabin and into everyday hotel stays for the first time since the Tata Group took over the airline's overhaul.

The partnership is structured in two directions. Maharaja Club members staying at most IHG-branded hotels — including InterContinental, Kimpton, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza, voco and Holiday Inn properties — will earn 2 Maharaja Points for every US$1 of eligible spend. Stays at IHG's extended-stay and value brands, specifically Candlewood Suites, Staybridge Suites, IHG Residences and IHG Army Hotels, earn at a lower rate of 1 Maharaja Point per US$1 spent. In the other direction, IHG One Rewards members can convert their hotel points into Maharaja Points at a fixed rate of 1,000 IHG One Rewards Points for 200 Maharaja Points — a five-to-one ratio that IHG has said is consistent with most of its existing airline transfer partnerships. Conversions require a minimum of 1,000 IHG One Rewards Points and are processed through IHG's regional contact centres, with converted points expected to post to Maharaja Club accounts within 60 business days.

To mark the launch, Air India is running a promotional window from September 15 through December 31, 2026, during which Maharaja Club members can earn triple Maharaja Points on qualifying IHG stays, with no blackout dates during the promotional period. Members must register separately for the promotion to receive the bonus, according to details published in Air India's own newsroom and mirrored by hospitality-industry outlets including Hotel News Resource and eHotelier.

Why Air India is doing this now

The partnership lands roughly two years into Air India's post-Tata transformation, a period that has included a widebody and narrowbody refleeting programme, a merger with Vistara, and a running effort to modernise a loyalty scheme — Maharaja Club — that replaced the airline's old Flying Returns programme. Airline loyalty programs have increasingly become revenue and retention tools in their own right rather than simple mileage schemes, and hotel tie-ups are one of the more direct ways carriers extend their currency's utility without having to build new redemption inventory themselves. For Air India specifically, linking to a global hospitality group the size of IHG gives Maharaja Club members earning and burning opportunities well outside India, at a time when the airline has been simultaneously rebuilding international capacity after a summer of network cuts tied to wider disruptions across the Gulf and Middle East corridor.

For IHG, the arrangement fits a broader pattern of the hotel group pursuing airline partnerships as India's outbound and domestic travel markets grow. IHG has said the deal builds on its existing global footprint of hotels across categories from luxury to economy extended-stay, giving Air India passengers redemption and earning options whether they are travelling on business in a major metro or on a longer stay in a secondary market where budget-branded IHG properties are more common.

What members actually get, and what's still unclear

The earn side of the deal is the most tangible near-term benefit for road warriors who already stay at IHG properties: 2 Maharaja Points per dollar at most brands is a straightforward accrual mechanic, and the September 15–December 2026 triple-points promotion effectively lets early adopters earn 6 Maharaja Points per dollar spent at qualifying hotels for a roughly three-and-a-half-month window. That is a meaningful accelerant for Maharaja Club members trying to reach elite tiers or accumulate enough points for an award redemption before year-end.

The conversion side — turning IHG One Rewards Points into Maharaja Points — is a lower-value proposition on its face, since a 5:1 transfer ratio (1,000 IHG points for 200 Maharaja Points) is a steep discount compared with converting IHG points into some other airline programs' miles, though IHG has described the ratio as broadly in line with its typical airline transfer terms rather than being unusually poor for this specific deal. Neither Air India nor IHG have published a reverse ratio letting Maharaja Points convert into IHG hotel points, and neither company's published materials indicate any change to elite-tier reciprocity — meaning, as far as confirmed details go, an IHG Diamond Elite member does not automatically receive matching status or benefits within Maharaja Club, and vice versa, under this agreement. Any such elite-recognition component, if one exists, has not been disclosed in the material reviewed for this article, and should be treated as unconfirmed rather than assumed.

It is also unclear from currently available details exactly how many redemption categories or award nights the arrangement will eventually unlock for Maharaja Points redeemed toward IHG stays, since the announcements to date have focused on the earning and conversion mechanics rather than redemption specifics. Business Traveller and other outlets covering the launch have not reported additional redemption structures beyond the point-earning and conversion terms described above, and this article does not speculate beyond what has been published.

The bigger loyalty picture around Air India

This deal follows a string of moves by Air India to widen Maharaja Club's utility since the program's 2023 relaunch, including credit-card co-branding tie-ups and interline arrangements that came with the airline's 2024 merger of Air India and Vistara's loyalty bases. The Tata Group's stated ambition for Air India has repeatedly framed loyalty and ancillary revenue as central to closing the gap with larger regional and Gulf rivals such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines, all of which run mature co-branded hotel, retail and financial-services loyalty ecosystems around their core frequent-flyer programs.

Whether the IHG tie-up meaningfully moves that needle will depend on uptake among Maharaja Club's core demographic of business and long-haul international travellers, since IHG's global footprint — while large — skews toward markets where Air India does not always have direct service, meaning some of the earning opportunity will accrue to travellers on trips unconnected to an Air India flight itself. Still, for a loyalty program trying to demonstrate that it offers value beyond the cabin, a global hotel partner of IHG's scale is a concrete, verifiable step, even if some of the deal's finer mechanics — elite reciprocity, any future point-transfer promotions, or expanded redemption options — remain to be spelled out by either company.

How the Maharaja Club got here

Maharaja Club itself is a relatively young program by the standards of major international carriers. Air India relaunched its frequent-flyer scheme under the Maharaja Club name in 2023 as part of the broader Tata Group turnaround plan, replacing the pre-privatisation Flying Returns program with tiered status levels and a points currency the airline has since tried to extend across a widening set of partners. The 2024 integration of Vistara's Club Vistara loyalty base into Maharaja Club, following the completion of the Air India–Vistara merger, was one of the first major tests of that expansion, consolidating two separate member pools and two different tier structures into a single scheme. Since then, Air India has layered on co-branded credit card products with Indian banks and interline mileage-earning arrangements tied to its Star Alliance membership, which Air India retained through the Vistara merger before the carrier's own alliance status was reworked as part of its wider international network integration.

The IHG deal is notable in that it is the airline's first loyalty partnership of this scale outside the travel-and-banking categories it has focused on to date — airline seats, credit cards, and alliance partners. Hotel partnerships are a well-established category for major global carriers: Emirates Skywards, Qatar Airways Privilege Club and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer all maintain multiple hotel-transfer relationships, typically with several chains simultaneously rather than a single exclusive partner. Air India's decision to launch with IHG specifically, rather than a smaller regional hotel group, signals an intent to compete on the same terms as those larger Gulf and Southeast Asian rivals, at least in terms of loyalty-currency breadth, even though Air India's frequent-flyer base and network size remain considerably smaller than Emirates' or Qatar Airways'.

IHG's side of the equation

For IHG, the arrangement is one of a series of airline tie-ins the hotel group has built into IHG One Rewards, which the company has positioned as a way to make its roughly 7,100-hotel portfolio — spanning luxury brands such as InterContinental and Kimpton down to extended-stay and value brands such as Holiday Inn Express, Candlewood Suites and Staybridge Suites — more attractive to travellers who already hold airline status or points elsewhere. India has been a growth market IHG has repeatedly flagged in its own investor and corporate communications, given rising outbound leisure travel and a growing base of business travellers moving between Indian metros and hubs across the Gulf, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America — all regions where IHG has a substantial hotel count. Tying into Air India's loyalty base, rather than a smaller Indian carrier's, gives IHG access to what is still India's flagship international airline by network reach, even as domestic rivals IndiGo and Akasa Air have grown their own market share over the past several years.

The tiered earning structure — 2 points per dollar at IHG's mainstream and upscale brands versus 1 point per dollar at its extended-stay and government/military-oriented brands such as IHG Army Hotels — mirrors earning structures IHG uses in several of its other airline partnerships globally, according to details published on Air India's own partner page. That consistency suggests the Air India deal was built on IHG's existing partnership template rather than a bespoke arrangement negotiated from scratch, which is typical for how large hotel loyalty programs onboard new airline partners at scale.

Air India has not indicated whether the IHG partnership is a template for additional hospitality tie-ups, though the airline's public statements around the Maharaja Club relaunch have consistently signalled interest in expanding non-flight earning and redemption options. The triple-points promotion running through December 31, 2026 gives a natural checkpoint: how Air India and IHG describe uptake, or whether the promotional bonus is extended or made permanent, will be one of the clearer signals of whether the partnership is delivering the engagement both companies are betting on.

Air India Links Maharaja Club to IHG's 7,100 Hotels in New Loyalty Tie-Up