Earn 218k points for $0

Good morning, beautiful people, and welcome back to Daily Drop!

I’ve got a fun one for you today, so let’s get into the good stuff:

• 🤯 Earn an easy 200k points for $0

• 🏨 IHG new member bonus: Earn 5,000 points for your first stay

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

🤯 Earn an easy 200k points for $0

Okay, this one is fun…

What if I told you there was a way to earn at least 218,000 points worth well over $5,000 all for a cost of… wait for it… $0?

Sounds crazy, right?

Well, hold my beer. 🍺

If you use these points for certain U.S. destinations, that value could easily be $10,000 or more.

Allow me to explain.

Last week, I told you about a new offer to earn 90,000 UR Points with this no-annual-fee card.

It’s what we in the biz refer to as “low-hanging fruit.”

Now, here’s what you do…

If you refer someone to this card (like your spouse, significant other, child, etc), you’ll get 20,000 UR Points… and they’ll get 90,000.

Once you both meet the minimum spending requirement for each card, you’ll be left with 218,000 points.

If you transfer those points to Hyatt, it’s VERY easy to get around $5,200 in value.

For example, you could take a trip to London and spend a week in this hotel, which costs 9,000 Hyatt points per night:

With a cash cost of over $1,800 for the 7-night stay, that’s already a CRAZY return on your $0 investment.

But you’ll still have over 150,000 points left… 😏

You could use those points to book a 3-night stay at one of the most exclusive, expensive, and hard-to-book hotels in the world: the Alila Ventana Big Sur in California.

That nightly price tag of over $2,500 per night is no fluke. That’s the normal price.

It’s truly an aspirational property that is really only possible for normal people with miles and points.

With taxes, this stay comes out to about $9,000 for a 3-night stay. 

But for you, it’s FREEEEEE.

Even after you’ve booked both of these experiences (worth a combined $11,000), you’d STILL have 20,000 points left over.

That’s good - because you can transfer them over to Virgin Atlantic to book ROUND-TRIP flights to London for that first example we talked about. 😉

So here’s the bottom line:

We RARELY see offers on no-annual-fee cards that can offer such extreme outsize value.

And these are just a couple of very simple examples of ways to get this kind of value from that many points…

I’d highly recommend you check out the card, especially if you have friends, relatives, or a spouse you can refer to in order to double your collective points.

🏨 IHG new member bonus: Earn 5,000 points for your first stay

We love an easy travel win, and this one fits the bill 😏

IHG’s newest promo will let new IHG One Rewards members earn 5,000 bonus points after completing their first stay!

So if you aren’t a member of IHG yet, now is literally a great time to join.

Here are the details:

• You need to create an account and register for the promo before January 31, 2025

• Your qualifying paid stay must be completed by January 31, 2025

• A qualifying stay can be a minimum of just one night that costs at least $30 before tax

• You must book directly with IHG (versus a third-party site)

IHG points tend to be valued around .5 cents per point, so if you did manage to find a $30 hotel for a night, you’d be getting a return of $25 in value for those 5,000 points earned.

Not bad!

Realistically, you’re more likely to find hotels that cost more than that $30 minimum, especially if you’re planning to travel domestically or to the ever-popular Europe.

For instance, if you’re planning to head to Europe for some Christmas markets this December, here’s a hotel in Munich for under $100 during peak holiday travel 👇

And with award redemptions starting as low as 10,000 points per night for some properties, you’d already be halfway to redeeming for a free night in the future by earning the 5,000 bonus points from this promo.

In the end, I wouldn’t go out of your way to book a stay just to get these points, but if you have any upcoming travel before January and can take advantage of this promo, it’s an easy way to earn some bonus points!

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The correct answer is... Sweden!

Yup - Sweden takes the top spot! 🇸🇪 An impressive 57% of Swedes have visited 10 or more countries, making them the most well-traveled people on the planet.

Sweden’s culture places a high value on travel.

Plus, with nearly all Swedes having visited at least one other country, not traveling is practically unheard of in their nation.

But Europeans, in general, are known to be well-traveled.

Why, you ask?

It’s partly because of Europe’s smaller geographic size and ease of movement within the EU, which makes hopping around pretty easy.

For instance, France, the largest EU country, is smaller than Texas, so crossing borders is like driving between states in the U.S.

And even though the U.S. is known to travel quite a bit, it ranks much lower on the list, with only 11% of Americans having visited ten or more countries (which is still awesome, by the way).

Curious where other countries land on this list? Read the full study here.

Speaking of Virgin Atlantic, check out this fun win from one of our members in the Daily Drop Lounge 🙌

If you want to mark your Facebook status as “feeling happy,” just like this member did, come on over and join us in our private Facebook community to share your own wins and learn from others!

That’s gonna do it for today, y’all!

I think we’ve become so accustomed to seeing amazing offers recently that it’s easy to gloss over some of them, so I hope you are as excited as I am about the one I told you about today.

Anyway, take care and see you bright and early tomorrow. ❤️

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