IHG Merlin – A Quick Guide for InterContinental Hotels Group Employees
What's the scoopwith IHG Merlin?
Several years ago, IHG connected all of its hotels around the world with Merlin, their intranet system (the internal website for all IHG colleagues) to form a a single communications platform across all of their hotels.
This was a challenge with some of the more remotely located properties, but a team of more than 220 worked on the project around the globe, to ensure all hotels were enabled with business intelligence and had up-to-the-minute information on each others' business performance. This allowed IHG owners and general managers to make quicker decisions, which has always been an important part of their revenue management.
Today, Merlin is the main source of news, HR, and corporate information within IHG and a huge library of training opportunities and other resources for employees. For instance, IHG booking agents can use Merlin to complete IHG Agent University coursework to learn more about their brands and how to make the best choices for customers.
What else is in this post?
- What's the scoop with IHG Merlin?
- How do I get IHG Merlin?
- Can I get access to the IHG Friends and Family rate with Merlin?
How do I get IHG Merlin?
If you're an IHG employee with aMerlin account already, you can log in to your Merlin account here.
If you are an IHG employee and have yet to open a Merlin account, you can do so here, but it can take up to 24 hours for the account to be enabled.
If you don't work for IHG, it isn't possible to open a Merlin account.
Can I get access to the IHG Friends and Family rate with Merlin?
We've written about this rate before, as if you're an IHG employee, you can make significant savings when using it, but you don't earn points or credits by booking this way, so always compare the saving you could make with how many points you could lose before making a booking.
In the past, employees accessed Merlin to make Friends and Family bookings, but now anyone can make the booking via special links such as this.
You can findmany of these links with simple Google searches. To complete the booking process, you need to print out a rate voucher, where you input the IHG employee's name and a few employees have advertised their names for people to use.
Some IHG properties will ask for the voucher at check-in, while others don't bother. Most travelers who have tried this tend to saythat the voucher wasn't necessary for them (but we recommend at least having the voucher if you don't actually know an IHG employee).
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