How to avoid this new airline devaluation

Goooooooood morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, where we help you make sense of the chaos that is points and miles.

Today, we’ve got some tedious (but good) content for you:

• ✈️ Emirates points devaluation (and how to avoid it)

• 🏨 Earn 4,000 Hilton points per stay

• 🔁 Massive transfer bonus to TAP Portugal

✈️ Emirates points devaluation (and how to avoid it)

Last week, Emirates dropped a big devaluation on us, pumping up award costs on many of their flights, including upgrade awards (my favorite way to use Emirates miles).

Booooooooo!!

What is going on with Emirates lately? They’ve devalued transfer ratios from banks, restricted first-class awards, and now this.

What changed?

Most Emirates award rates and upgrade rates increased by 15% overnight, which sucks.

But there is one silver lining… 😏

Some award rates actually went down in price… including Emirates’ fifth-freedom routes between the U.S. and Europe.

For example, flying from Newark (EWR) to Athens (ATH) on Emirates in business class previously cost 87,000 Emirates miles.

Now, a one-way saver award on this route will cost you 59,000 miles (though with the same offensively high taxes and fees).

There is an alternative

Personally, I’m about to jet off on a trip around the world, and one route I was looking at was flying from Male (in the Maldives) to Mahe (in the Seychelles).

It’s an annoying path to fly, and the easiest way is on Emirates via Dubai, which costs over $4,000 in business class every day.

After this devaluation, I was sad to see that Emirates wanted 66,000 miles and a whopping $870 in taxes and fees.

Since every points program except Bilt devalued their transfer ratios last year, this would mean shelling out 82,000-88,000 transferrable points.

But I found a better way…

You see, one of Emirates’ more obscure partners is Japan Airlines.

You can transfer points to JAL from Capital One, Bilt Rewards, and even Rove Miles.

And better yet, JAL was only charging 42,000 miles and around $200 in taxes for the same Emirates business-class ticket on the same day.

So I transferred some points over and booked it, easy peasy.

The bottom line

Emirates continues its trend of making it as hard as possible to book flights with points and miles.

But don’t let them.

With a quick workaround, you can continue to get good value and enjoy Emirates’ amazing experiences without having to deplete your points balances and bank accounts.

🏨 Earn 4,000 Hilton points per stay

Hilton is out with a new promotion that is slightly better than the one that just ended.

And by slightly, I mean…. slightly.

Here’s the deal:

Between June 1 and August 15, you can get up to 4,000 bonus Hilton points per stay based on how long it is:

• 2,000 bonus points for stays of 1-3 nights

• 4,000 bonus points for stays of 4+ nights

Is it groundbreaking? No. Will you earn enough points for a free stay somewhere? Hell no.

Should you register for the promotion anyway and get some easy points on your next stay? Yep.

The real magic with Hilton and promos like this is when you start stacking.

Let me explain:

I have two Hilton stays coming up next month, one of which is at this Garden Inn in Mbabane, Eswatini, for $97 per night.

My 4-night stay here will cost $388 total, which is not bad for a chain hotel in the most random country in the world.

But…

I’ll also earn a crap load of points because I hold this Hilton card.

Not only does the card earn 14x points per dollar on Hilton stays, but it also gives you Diamond Elite status, which earns you 100% more points on stays (aka double).

Between those things AND this promotion, here is what I’ll earn:

• 3,880 points for being a Hilton member

• 3,880 points for having Diamond status

• 5,432 points from the credit card spend

• 4,000 bonus points from the promotion

In total, I’ll walk away with 17,192 Hilton points from a cheap stay in a place where there are no other hotel options.

That’s (surprisingly) enough to book a free night at a cheap property like this one in Jaipur, India:

So here’s the bottom line:

When hotel programs come out with promos like this, just register. If you end up staying, you’ll be happy to rack up a few extra points.

🔁 Massive transfer bonus to TAP Portugal

Sooo Bilt’s latest Rent Day promotion can only be described as “meh.”

On June 1st only, you can transfer your Bilt Points to TAP Air Portugal with a 25-125% bonus, depending on your level of Bilt status.

The transfer bonus breaks down as follows:

• Bilt Blue member (no status): 25% bonus

• Bilt Silver status: 50% bonus

• Bilt Gold status: 75% bonus

• Bilt Platinum status: 100% bonus

As always, you can also use Bilt Cash (which you earn from Bilt credit cards) to bump yourself up a status level on June 1st.

If you have Platinum status and do the status bump, you’ll get a whopping 125% transfer bonus.

But here’s the thing:

Don’t do it. And I’ll tell you why.

Even if Bilt points are the ONLY points you have, this still doesn’t make any sense – even with a transfer bonus.

For example, let’s say you live in New York and want to fly to Portugal later this summer.

TAP will ask you to shell out a MINIMUM of 42,000 TAP miles, but often far more than that:

Even with a transfer bonus of 25% (which every Bilt member can get on June 1), you’d still need 33,000 Bilt points to book it.

Instead, you could transfer 21,500 Bilt points to Flying Blue and fly nonstop on the SAME exact route on Delta (with even lower taxes and fees):

Even on Star Alliance flights (including TAP), Aeroplan’s pricing beats out TAP in basically every route, even with a 25% transfer bonus.

The edge case

If you have top-tier Bilt status and can snag a 100% or 125% transfer bonus, then sure – this might be useful to you if you can find cheap TAP pricing.

But even then, you might have to change or cancel your plans and end up stuck with niche TAP miles that probably won’t be super useful down the road.

So here’s my advice:

Sit this one out and don’t be seduced by the shiny transfer bonus. 🤷🏼‍♂️

That’s all for today, folks! I’m bummed about that Emirates news…

But as you should know by now, there’s ALWAYS a way to find a workaround to devaluations like this… if you get creative. 😉

Have a great day and see you tomorrow,

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.