Elite perks without elite status

👋🏼 Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop — like your personal item on a flight: compact, overstuffed, and always free.

Let’s get started:

• 😎 Elite perks without elite status

• 🍔 $75 dining credit at top restaurants

• ✈️ 40% transfer bonus to Avios

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😎 Elite perks without elite status

Let’s be honest — earning hotel elite status the old-fashioned way takes time, loyalty, and a lot of nights on the road.

But what if you could unlock VIP perks at luxury hotels… even if you only travel once or twice a year?

That’s where The Edit by Chase Travel^SM comes in. 👇

This premium hotel collection is exclusive to Chase Sapphire Reserve® cardholders and features 1,000+ high-end properties around the world.

Just by booking through The Edit, you’ll get elite-style perks like:

• 🍳 Daily free breakfast for two

• 💆‍♀️ $100 property credit (dining, spa treatments, etc.)

• 🛏 Complimentary room upgrades (when available)

• 🕐 Late checkout (when available)

• 🏨 Loyalty perks + elite night credit at most major brands

And the best part? You don’t need hotel status to get these benefits. Just having the Sapphire Reserve card unlocks it all.

Stack even more value with $1,000+ toward hotel stays

Right now, the Sapphire Reserve is offering 125,000 bonus points after spending $6,000 in the first three months from account opening.

Plus, you’ll also receive an up to $500 credit each year just for booking prepaid two-night stays through The Edit (up to $250 credits biannually)

That’s up to $1,000 in value for luxury hotel stays through The Edit in your first year — plus all those elite-style perks on top.

And not every hotel in The Edit is some fancy $500/night property. Here’s a high-end hotel we found in Dubai for just $128 per night:

On top of that, you’ll earn 8x Chase points on bookings made through Chase Travel^SM , including The Edit.

Those points can be used for even more travel later or transferred to valuable partners like World of Hyatt, Aeroplan, British Airways, and more.

So if you like to travel in style but don’t have the ability to earn status the old-fashioned way, here’s your answer!

✨ Check out the Sapphire Reserve now ✨

🍔 $75 dining credit at top restaurants

There’s a new dining perk on the table, and it’s one of those “worth checking out just to see if your city made the cut” kind of deals.

👉 If you’ve got the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you’re eligible.

Here’s the gist

• When you link your card with The Infatuation — a restaurant-discovery site that curates “top-rated” spots in major U.S. cities — you can score a $75 statement credit after spending $150 or more at select restaurants with the Sapphire Preferred.

• The offer runs from September 16 to October 16 and includes about 165 restaurants across New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Boston, Dallas, San Diego, DC, and Miami.

Some of the names on the list are heavy hitters: Bad Roman in NYC, Virtue in Chicago, Republique in LA, Foreign Cinema in San Francisco, Old Ebbitt Grill in DC, and Prime 112 in Miami, just to name a few.

The fine print

• You’ll need to register by linking your Infatuation and card accounts.

• The $75 credit is one-time only, not per swipe.

• Spend has to hit the $150 threshold at participating restaurants before the deadline.

What’s The Infatuation?

If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry — neither had I. It’s basically a slick review and discovery platform that highlights buzzy restaurants in major cities. Think “Zagat meets Instagram foodies,” but now with perks baked in if you have the Sapphire Preferred.

Bottom line

If you’re in one of the covered cities and have a dinner reservation coming up (and hold the Sapphire Preferred), it’s a no-brainer to link your accounts and lock in the $75 back.

✈️ 40% transfer bonus to Avios

If you read yesterday’s newsletter about the new Avios transfer tool, this is exactly why it matters.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club just launched a transfer bonus from ThankYou points that can juice your Avios balance by up to 40%, and you can then shuffle those Avios to the right program for the award you want.

The kicker: this bonus is run by Qatar, not ThankYou points itself, so you won’t see the bonus on the transfer page — the extra Avios post on the Qatar side.

You can read more about the offer on this dedicated page.

How it works:

• Valid now through October 15, 2025.

• Tiered by single transaction size (not cumulative):

  • Transfer up to 9,999 points → 20% bonus

  • Transfer 10,000 to 49,999 points → 30% bonus

  • Transfer 50,000+ points → 40% bonus

• Bonus Avios are credited by November 30, 2025.

Why this is powerful

Qatar uses Avios, the same currency used by British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, etc., and you can move Avios 1:1 between these programs after your bonus posts.

That lets you transfer to Qatar to pick up the bonus, then send Avios to the program that prices your award best.

Sweet spots (assuming you hit the full 40% tier)

To make the math simple, I’ve listed both the Avios price and the approximate ThankYou points you’d need after a 40% bonus.

• Qatar Qsuites, US ⇄ Doha (nonstop): 70,000 Qatar Avios (50,000 ThankYou points)

• East Coast US ⇄ Ireland (economy, off-peak on Aer Lingus) — 13,000 Aer Lingus Avios (9,300 ThankYou points)

• US ⇄ Spain (Iberia business, off-peak) — 40,500 Iberia Avios (29,000 ThankYou points)

• Domestic US hops on American — from around 9,500 Qatar Avios (6,800 ThankYou points)

• Domestic Japan on JAL (economy) — 10,500 BA Avios (7,500 ThankYou points), with $0 taxes 🙌

Why add to your ThankYou stash now?

Transfer bonuses like this pop up unpredictably — and when they do, they can turn a 50k stash into a 70k Qsuite ticket, or drop short-hauls into “almost free” territory.

That’s why it’s always good to have a stash of ThankYou points on hand if you can.

That’s all for today, folks!

Make sure you tune in tomorrow, when I’ll tell you about a QUINTUPLE stack I’m using for travel this month. 😏

See you next time,

8.4095° S, 115.1889° E

With contributions by Tiffany Eastham, McKay Moffitt, and Benji Stawski