It’s a good day to be a Delta fan

☀️ Good morning and Happy Monday, my friends.

We’ve got quite a few good deals and opportunities to get to, so let’s get straight to the point(s):

• 3️⃣ 3 solid Delta promos

• ✈️ Earn an easy 2,000 Southwest points

• 🌎 15% transfer bonus to Avianca

3️⃣ 3 solid Delta promos

Delta is making a big push to get SkyMiles members booking hotels and rental cars through Delta Stays.

In fact, they just launched three separate promotions that can earn you extra miles, help you earn elite status, and even save you some miles on award bookings.

Let’s break ‘em all down:

Earn Delta elite status without flying

The first promotion lets you earn 1 Medallion Qualification Dollar (MQD) per dollar on hotels and rental cars booked through Delta Stays.

If you’re unfamiliar with MQDs, they’re the currency for earning elite status. Normally, you earn MQDs by flying Delta or spending on certain Delta credit cards.

This promotion creates another path: booking travel through Delta’s hotel and rental car portal.

If you’re working toward Delta Medallion status this year, this could be an easy way to earn additional MQDs from travel expenses you’d be making anyway.

Earn 5x SkyMiles on your first booking

Delta is also offering 5x SkyMiles on eligible hotel stays booked through Delta Stays.

This promotion is only available for first-time bookings, making it a nice incentive for anyone who hasn’t tried Delta Stays before.

For context, Delta Stays bookings normally earn SkyMiles, but this promotion boosts that earning rate significantly.

Plus, certain Delta credit cards come with annual $200 or $250 credits toward Delta Stays, which makes for a nice stacking opportunity.

As always, it’s worth comparing prices against booking directly with a hotel or through other travel portals. But if pricing is similar, earning 5x miles can make the Delta option much more attractive.

Save 15% when redeeming SkyMiles

The final promotion offers a 15% discount when using SkyMiles to book hotels or rental cars through Delta Stays.

In other words, if you were already planning to redeem SkyMiles for one of these bookings, your miles will stretch a bit further during the promotion period.

That said, this is definitely the least exciting of the three offers.

Generally, I’d recommend reserving your SkyMiles for flights, especially since Delta has been offering frequent flash sales with respectable award pricing.

The bottom line

None of these deals is groundbreaking… but for Delta fans, getting to elite status faster, racking up extra miles, and saving miles on certain bookings all might be welcome deals.

You can check out each of the three promos on this page, all of which are valid for at least a few more weeks.

✈️ Earn an easy 2,000 Southwest points

Southwest is out with a super easy way to rack up thousands of extra Southwest points toward your next flight.

Specifically, you can earn 2,000 bonus Southwest points when you spend at least $200 in their online shopping portal.

You can log in and check your progress on this page, but generally speaking, it should be pretty easy for most people to achieve this, given the wide list of retailers.

The nice part about this promo is that the 2,000 bonus points are in addition to what you already earn from shopping.

For example, if you need to buy any electronics, you could earn 7x Southwest points per dollar at Best Buy.

If you spend $200 there, you’ll earn 1,400 points from the normal earning rate and another 2,000 points from this promo.

With those 3,400 points, you could already book a short-haul flight with Southwest.

For example, I used to fly between Boston and Baltimore all the time back in the day. That route often costs just 3,000 points:

There are even some retailers that are offering tens of thousands of points when signing up for specific services and products.

Depending on where you normally shop, this might be an easy win for Southwest fans.

Plus, if you use a Southwest co-branded card to shop, you’ll earn even more points.

This deal is only good until June 29, so you need to jump on it sooner rather than later if you’re interested.

🌎 15% transfer bonus to Avianca

There’s a new, sub-par transfer bonus to a sub-par airline program… that may be interesting to some of you.

Until July 15, you can get a 15% bonus when transferring MR points to Avianca Lifemiles.

This transfer bonus is being offered by Avianca, not MR points… so when you make your transfer, you won’t see the bonus advertised on the bank page.

If you want to read more about it, check out the page on Avianca’s website.

Anyway, should you transfer points to Avianca?

If you asked me two years ago, the answer would be “yes. 100% yes.”

But Avianca devalued the crap out of their miles multiples times recently, and now all of the sweet spots are gone.

However…

If you’re interested in traveling to South or Central America, using Lifemiles to fly on Avianca itself can still offer great value.

For example, you can fly from New York City to Bogota in business class for just 33,000 LifeMiles.

That’s pretty solid already, but taking 15% off means you only need to transfer 29,000 MR points, which is great for 6 hours in business class.

If you’re traveling with a family, short-haul economy awards on Avianca can cost as few as 2,000 or 3,000 miles each way.

When you add those up and shave 15% off, you could build a fun little trip around Central America around this deal.

Anyway, this won’t be for everyone. But if you can find some flights that work, there’s nothing wrong with a 15% discount.

That’s all for today, folks! Hope you have a wonderful Monday, and I’ll see you first thing tomorrow.

Ciao,

3.3869° S, 36.6830° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.