Get a 197% return on hotel spend

👋🏼 Howdy, my friends. I’m writing to you from my business-class cocoon on Cathay Pacific, on my way home!

Since I’m finally back on an airline with Wi-Fi, let’s get into the good travel stuff:

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

• 🏨 MASSIVE points return on hotel purchases

• ✈️ Up to 35% transfer bonus to Aeroplan

• 🔐 My quietest (but most useful) travel buddy

• 🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The answer is chillin at the bottom of today’s newsletter… so keep reading!

🏨 MASSIVE points return on hotel purchases

Rove Miles is back on their nonsense today.

They basically took last week’s Black Friday promo and cranked it up even further — today only, you can earn up to 10,000 bonus Rove Miles on hotel bookings through their portal.

Here’s the deal in plain English:

• Spend $500 → get 5,000 bonus miles using TRAVELTUESDAY500

• Spend $1,000 → get 10,000 bonus miles using TRAVELTUESDAY1000

Where this becomes ridiculous is how these bonuses stack on top of Rove’s already chunky multipliers.

Let me show you my favorite example.

Say you want to go to Japan during cherry blossom season — because obviously you do — and you book this Kyoto machiya for seven nights at a total of $1,208.

For that stay alone, you earn 54,366 Rove Miles.

Add the 10,000-mile Travel Tuesday bonus on top, and you’re walking away with 64,366 total miles – plus whatever you earn from your credit card spend.

Now, where it gets stupid is the fact that the same exact seven-night stay prices at 33,000 Rove Miles.

As shown right in the screenshot, that shakes out to a 3.7¢ per point redemption.

If you redeem all of your earnings at that rate, you’re getting a 197% return on your spend, which is…. hilarious.

But maybe you don’t even want to redeem for another hotel. Maybe you’d rather take those miles and turn them into something… higher altitude. 😎

Since Rove has tons of transfer partners — including Flying Blue — you could move 60,000 miles over and book this business-class flight to Europe on Air France. 👇

So yes: booking a cute little machiya for cherry blossom season can also hand you a free lie-flat seat to Europe. It’s completely ridiculous, and I respect it.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• This only works for first-time hotel bookings with Rove

• You also earn credit card points from the cash spend

• New users get 1,000 bonus miles just for signing up (with this link)

Happy Travel Tuesday, my friends. Go click some buttons. 🫡

✈️ Up to 35% transfer bonus to Aeroplan

Aeroplan is running one of those transfer bonuses that sounds confusing, but once you zoom out a bit, it’s actually fantastic — especially if you already hold this co-branded credit card.

Basically, you can get a 15-25% bonus when transferring UR points to Aeroplan until January 5th, 2026.

The promo is tiered, meaning the bonus jumps as your transfer amount increases:

• 15% bonus on transfers of 1,000–74,000 points

• 20% bonus on transfers of 75,000–174,000 points

• 25% bonus on transfers of 175,000+ points

And here’s where it gets spicy: if you do have the co-branded card, you already get a 10% bonus when transferring UR points (minimum of 50,000 points).

Stack that with this promo, and you’re looking at a combined bonus of up to 35%.

The tiers are high — yes.

But even the 15% tier is better than most programs’ headline bonuses. Aeroplan’s award chart is already so strong that a modest boost goes a long way.

Take their distance-based pricing for most partner awards. This structure opens the door to some of the best sweet spots in the game.

For example, you can fly from Seattle or Vancouver to Japan in business class for 55,000 Aeroplan points on partners like ANA, because that routing falls into Aeroplan’s lowest distance band between North America and Asia.

With a 15% bonus, you only need 48,000 points to book that.

If you’re a co-branded cardholder stacking up to 35%, that drops to just 41,000 UR points — as long as you transfer enough to hit the right tier.

And that’s just one example. Aeroplan has a pile of sweet spots, plus the ability to add a stopover for just 5,000 points.

I won’t go deep into that today, but I wrote a whole newsletter about it — feel free to check that out if you want the full stopover masterclass.

Bottom line: Aeroplan has more partners than any other airline program, some of the best award flexibility out there, and now a transfer bonus that actually moves the needle.

If you’ve got the right combination of points and cards, this is one of the smartest ways to stretch your UR points even further.

SPONSORED BY SURFSHARK

🔐 My quietest (but most useful) travel buddy

I spend so much time thinking about flights, points, and hotel status that I completely ignored something basic: the Wi-Fi I’m actually using while I book everything.

Enter: Surfshark.

It takes literally two clicks, and suddenly:

• My data is fully encrypted

• My location is hidden

• And the internet thinks I’m still curled up on my couch in New York (when I’m actually trying to stream Bake Off from a hotel in Zurich).

Now I can securely check my bank account, make purchases, or sneak in an episode of Netflix without wondering who's watching over my digital shoulder — and Surfshark never tracks, monitors, or stores what I do online.

Bonus Perk: One membership protects unlimited devices at once. Laptop, phone, tablet, fiancé’s phone, random iPad you forgot you owned… done.

Whether you’re gearing up for a big trip or just tired of your coffee shop Wi-Fi giving hacker vibes, this is one of those small things you’ll wish you’d set up way sooner.

👉 Go to surfshark.com/dailydrop or use code DAILYDROP at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

If you guessed AirAsia, give yourself a quick pat on the back. 🙂

According to Skytrax’s 2025 World Airline Awards, people voted AirAsia… for the 16th consecutive year. Sixteen. That’s pretty good, y’all.

A few reasons it keeps winning:

• One-way flights like Kuala Lumpur to Phuket for around $40

• Frequent flash promos (their “Free Seats” campaign is one example)

• Multiple bundles like “Value Pack” and “Premium Flex” that let you add perks without blowing up your fare

As with most budget airlines, the lowest fares typically only include your seat (so luggage, seat selection, and priority boarding are all add-ons).

But people seem happy to deal with that if it means paying less than what most airport meals cost.

Other top picks included: Scoot (Singapore Airlines’ budget brand — also named best long-haul low-cost carrier), IndiGo, Eurowings, Vueling, and Spirit (lol… kidding about the last one).

Want to dig into the full rankings? They’re all here.

That’s gonna do it for today, folks. I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Sampai jumpa lagi,

6.1944° S, 106.8229° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt