Book NYC hotels for 10k points per night

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop – the newsletter currently operating on the same energy as a Roomba that keeps bumping into the same wall but refuses to give up.

Let’s get through this Monday, folks:

• 💳 My newest travel card

• 🏨 A hefty new 70% transfer bonus

• 🇨🇳 The ultimate guide to China visa-free transit

• 🚗 How to do a 2-week road trip in New Zealand

💳 My newest travel card

So… I did a thing on Friday.

I picked up a Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card, and honestly, it’s one of the better deals I’ve snagged this year.

Did I need it? No.

I already have almost 600,000 Marriott Bonvoy points doing absolutely nothing except vibing in my account… But this offer was so disproportionately good that it felt rude not to take it.

Let me walk you through why. 👇

The perks alone are silly-good

There are a few things this card gives you immediately that make it stand out:

• The free night award alone basically pays the annual fee (more on that later)

• The 15 elite night credits stack with my other Marriott card – which means I automatically start each year with 40 elite nights.

• The annual fee is only $125, and the welcome offer is up to 125,000 points. 👇

That ratio is just silly… It’s rare to see a card with a low annual fee offering so many points.

But there’s another super underrated perk of this card.

You get a 7% discount on cash bookings, and I have found that it regularly undercuts other best-rate options – and with more flexibility.

Take this Marriott hotel in downtown New Orleans. This card offers a rate that’s $6 cheaper than the next best rate.

That’s not game-changing, but even if you spend ten nights a year at Marriott, this perk alone is shaving the annual fee down by 50%.

But here’s the real reason I wanted this card:

Since the Marriott Bonvoy Business Amex earns at least two points per dollar on everything, I’ll end up with (at least) 143,000 more points after meeting the minimum spend.

And there are a LOT of ways I can get 10-15x my return on spend with that offer.

What I can book

(This part is insane. Please buckle your airplane seatbelt.)

1️⃣ Five nights at a gorgeous Bali resort

Take the Marriott Bali Nusa Dua Terrace. This place runs 28,000 points per night, and thanks to Marriott’s “5th night free” magic, a 5-night stay costs 112,000 points total.

With a cash cost of $259 per night after taxes, this is already a great deal. But that also leaves me with 31,000 points to play with.

2️⃣ Then five more nights in Bali

Next up: Four Points by Sheraton Ungasan, which clocks in at 7,000 points per night.

So another 5-night stay is 28,000 points total (again, using Marriott’s 5th night free perk).

Even after those ten nights, I’ve still got 3,000 points left.

3️⃣ And then… the flex: a free night at the Ritz-Carlton Bali

The card’s annual 35,000-point free night certificate can be topped up with up to 15k points.

With that, I could book yet another night at the freaking Ritz-Carlton Bali, which runs just 44,000 points per night.

I’d still need 6,000 more points to top up that cert, but like I said… I’ve already got plenty of points.

If I didn’t have them, I could top up from Membership Rewards points, Ultimate Rewards points, or plenty of other currencies.

The total haul

From one $125 card:

• 5 nights at a resort worth $1,295

• 5 nights at a cheaper property worth $270

• 1 night at the Ritz-Carlton worth $256

Total value: $1,821

Total cost: $125

That is eleven free nights in Bali just from grabbing a card I technically didn’t “need.”

And that’s why I love hoarding Marriott points.

Not because I let them sit – but because when the time comes, I burn them with fire, so I want to acquire them when the offers are good.

🏨 A hefty new 70% transfer bonus

There’s a 70% transfer bonus to IHG right now when you transfer from Ultimate Rewards points, which sounds amazing on paper.

But before anyone gets carried away and starts emptying their UR-point balance like they’re making it rain in a hotel loyalty strip club… remember:

IHG points aren’t worth nearly as much as most other currencies.

However…

For the right redemption, this bonus can be VERY, VERY real.

Especially if you’ve got the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card that gives you every 4th night free on award stays — which is one of the best perks in hotel-land if you know how to use it.

Let me show you a spicy example.

There’s a brand-spanking-new voco Times Square opening soon in NYC, and it’s pricing at 17,250 points per night thanks to the 4th-night-free magic.

A full four-night stay comes out to exactly 69,000 IHG points total (nice). With the 70% transfer bonus, you’d only need to transfer 41,000 Ultimate Rewards points, or just 10,000 points per night.

That’s a fantastic deal for four nights in the Big Apple, and not a deal you could get by transferring to other programs, which is why it’s definitely worthwhile.

But – and I cannot stress this enough – this works best if:

• You have the IHG Premier with the 4th-night-free perk

• The hotel happens to be priced well

• And the transfer bonus works out to a better rate than you can get with other programs like Hyatt or Marriott

This is not a universal truth. It’s a “run the math, and if the math is hot, go for it” situation.

The bonus runs through January 15, so you’ve got time to mull it over.

🇨🇳 The ultimate guide to China visa-free transit

I just got home after spending a full month bouncing around China like an overstimulated pinball – Yunnan, Gansu, Jilin, and more.

But here’s the fun part:

You don’t actually need a visa to see a shocking amount of the same cool places I just visited.

China’s visa-free transit programs are way more generous (and way less scary) than people realize, and I finally put together the ultimate, non-boring, “here’s exactly how this works without making you sob into your passport” guide.

The article walks you through how to:

• Slip into China for a few days on a proper visa-free transit

• Actually leave the airport and explore

• Avoid the super common mistakes that get people denied boarding

• And even stay up to 30 days in one province without a visa at all

If you’ve ever wanted to visit China but got overwhelmed by the whole “documents!! requirements!! rules!!” situation… start here. 👇

🚗 How to do a 2-week road trip in New Zealand

New Zealand has this rude little habit of making you rethink your entire life every time you see a photo of it… and this week’s Daily Drop video did exactly that to me.

Daily Drop’s own Brendan and Erin spent two full weeks road-tripping from Queenstown all the way up to Auckland, stitching together every “holy crap” view the country has to offer.

And because I’m planning another New Zealand trip next year, this video was very inspiring for me personally.

If you’ve ever wanted to road trip NZ (or just want to stare at landscapes that look photoshopped), this one’s worth your time.

And that’s gonna do it for today, my friends. Stay tuned tomorrow for more deals, tips, and some year-end housekeeping you need to know.

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt