Extremely good portal news

Good morning from the Ancient Moonlight City in Shangri-La, China. 🌙

I’m packing my bags to head home for the first time in more than two months, but before I do, we’ve got some more travel deals to cover:

• 🏨 Hyatt is now in multiple portals (yay!)

• 🎄 Turn your December spending into actual travel

• 👕 Travel lighter (and smarter!) with Unbound Merino

• 📱 The best app for managing your cards

🏨 Hyatt is now in multiple portals (yay!)

For literal years, Hyatt has been that one friend who refuses to join group chats.

Everyone else is in the portal party — Marriott, Hilton, IHG — and Hyatt’s just… vibing alone.

But this weekend, something magical happened: World of Hyatt finally popped up in multiple shopping portals.

This is the first time we’ve seen this, and it is genuinely spicy news for points nerds.

Now, full honesty: portal bonuses are currently limited to North America and the Caribbean, which is devastating for me personally (because I live everywhere except there).

But for most of you…? Chef’s kiss.

Here’s why this matters:

Over the weekend, Rakuten briefly went absolutely feral and offered 12% back on Hyatt stays — or 12x MR points or Bilt points if you use those options.

If you can redeem those points for two cents a pop (which you can), that’s basically a 24% return on money you were already planning to spend.

That 12x rate is gone now (RIP), but I’m still seeing 3x — and honestly, that’s still wild considering Hyatt has never participated in these portals before.

Just as exciting: Capital One Offers now has Hyatt too, also showing 3x for me.

If you know Capital One Offers, you know the earning rates can get real crazy, real fast.

So now, on a single Hyatt cash stay, you can stack:

• Your normal Hyatt points

• Elite nights

• Milestone rewards

• Credit card points

• AND bonus transferable points or cash back from a portal

This is the good stuff. The VERY GOOD stuff.

Bottom line

If you’re booking a Hyatt cash stay in North America or the Caribbean, run — don’t walk — through a portal first.

This is literally free points on top of already-generous earnings, and it finally puts Hyatt on equal footing with all the other major chains.

(And it makes my little Hyatt fanboy heart extremely happy.)

🎄 Turn your December spending into actual travel

December is basically the Olympics of swiping your credit card. Gifts, flights, hotels, panic-shopping on December 23rd because you forgot your cousin exists — it all adds up.

So if you’re going to drop a ridiculous amount of money this month anyway, you might as well turn all that spending into real travel.

McKay just wrote a super helpful guide on how to do exactly that — from stacking bonuses to using the right cards to squeeze every last point out of December.

It’s short, it’s practical, and it’ll make you feel slightly better about the financial chaos you’re about to unleash.

If you’re spending big this month, at least make it rewarding.

📱 The best app for managing your cards

If your wallet looks like a chaotic stack of plastic with “I’ll track that perk later” energy… same.

Which is why I’ve actually been a MaxRewards customer for years.

In this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, we’ll give the app a review and break down why we love it so much.

For starters, it pulls all your credit cards into one place, tells you which card to use for every purchase, tracks your credits and perks automatically, and basically stops you from accidentally wasting value.

If you want to squeeze every last drop of juice from your cards, this one’s worth a watch. 👇

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend, and make sure to stay alert for last-minute deals popping up this week.

Cheers,

27.8425° N, 99.7432° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt