This program is (still) insane

Gooooooooooood morning from my spacious suite in the sky. I’m currently in Kuwait Airways’ first class on my way to Bangkok, and loving every second of it.

And if you want to fly some aspirational seats of your own, I’ve got some tips to help you get there:

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

• 🔥 This program is (still) insane

• ✈️ 20% transfer bonus to Avios

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The answer is at the bottom of today’s newsletter, so keep reading to find out!

🔥 This program is (still) insane

Okay, y’all. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you about Rove Miles? And how they started offering loyalty-eligible bookings?

Well, there have been a few more updates. And it turns out Rove is even better than I thought – and I’m kind of freaking out (in a healthy way).

As a reminder, Rove is a program that allows you to book flights, hotels, and more, and earn miles that can be transferred to airlines and hotels just like your bank points.

But what’s unique here is that they make it pretty easy to double or triple-dip and rack up quite a few miles.

What is going on with these earning rates?

The big thing I’ve discovered is that there are a LOT of hotels offering 50-65x Rove Miles per dollar…

For example, look at this hotel in London. It’s not glamorous, but it does earn 60x miles.

So, although one night costs $253 (which honestly isn’t totally abnormal for London), you’ll earn more than 15,000 Rove miles.

And look how much they charge to book the same hotel with points – 2,000 miles per night.

That means you’re effectively getting a buy one, get… seven.

I just left Jordan a few hours ago, and found this Hilton resort on the Dead Sea. Booked through Rove, it costs about $32 more per night than through Hilton.

But here’s the cool part… since you’re earning 42x Rove Miles, booking one night earns you enough Rove Miles to book the same hotel again.

Plus, the 42x rate even includes free breakfast (even without loyalty benefits). 🥞

Okay, one more example.

This hotel in Tokyo costs $162 per night, all in. BUT… it also earns 55x Rove miles. So you’ll rack up 9,000 miles from booking a single night.

You could use those miles to book three more nights at the same hotel.

Or, you could transfer them to a program like Avios (which Rove currently has a 20% transfer bonus to), and book a domestic U.S. flight on American Airlines for 9,500 Avios.

If that AA flight costs $162, you’re getting a 100% return on your hotel purchase.

The specific flight I showed you above happens to cost $382 on that day, which would be a 235% return on your spend.

It’s just… crazy.

New transfer partner

As I mentioned, you can transfer Rove Miles to programs like Finnair Avios, Cathay Pacific, KLM/Air France Flying Blue, and more.

As of yesterday, you can also transfer them to Miles & More – the loyalty program for Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, ITA, and a bunch more.

I don’t know a ton about the sweet spots here yet, but here are a few potential uses, just to give you an idea:

Miles & More often has crazy sales with round-trip business class flights to Europe for as little as 55,000 miles, but you can also get good value booking other Star Alliance partners:

• U.S. to South America on United or Air Canada for 62,500 miles in business class

• U.S. to Australia or New Zealand for 75,000 miles in business class

• U.S. to Southeast Asia in Singapore Airlines business class for 85,000 miles

The point is that Rove has a lot of great transfer partners, and they seem to be adding more and more.

An update to loyalty-eligible bookings

As I told you, Rove also supports hotel bookings that will earn you both Rove Miles AND hotel points, elite bonus, and elite night credits.

Well… they’ve also improved that.

Now, payments for loyalty-eligible bookings will be charged directly by the hotel.

This means if you book that Hilton hotel from earlier, choose the loyalty-eligible rate, and use a Hilton credit card to pay for it, you’ll earn the bonus multiplier for Hilton hotels that the card gives you.

The same goes for Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG co-branded cards. As long as you see this little text bubble in the search, you know this will be the case. 👇

One more thing

If you use my personal referral link to sign up, you might get some free miles.

Until October 31, there was an offer to get 500 free miles for signing up with a referral link… but it seems to still be live. So give it a try. 🤷🏼‍♂️

To be clear, we have no partnership with Rove. They didn’t ask me to write this, and they aren’t paying us anything – this is my personal link. And I’ll only earn miles if you actually use Rove to earn miles yourself.

Think of it as you helping me to create more great Daily Drop travel content in the future. 😉

Anyway, I’m super excited about Rove.

I’ve booked a couple of hotels through them for this week, and I’m already looking at more – there’s really nothing to lose when you can triple-dip with hotel and credit card points. 🤷🏼‍♂️

✈️ 20% transfer bonus to Avios

Speaking of 20% transfer bonuses to Avios, Rove isn’t the only program offering one.

Until November 22, you can also transfer Capital One miles to British Airways with a 20% bonus.

It’s worth noting that you can freely move Avios between various airlines – so you could transfer Capital One miles to BA, transfer those to Qatar, and book that American Airlines award I showed you in the last section.

Anyway, this is a solid deal if you have a stash of Capital One miles. And, we do see fairly regular transfer bonuses of 20-30% from other banks as well.

Still, there are lots of great Avios sweet spots you could leverage here.

For example, you could transfer them to Iberia (after first moving them to BA), then fly from New York to Madrid in lie-flat business class for 40,500 Avios. 👇

Thanks to this bonus, that’s just 34,000 Capital One miles for business class across the pond – a fantastic deal.

Unlike Rove Miles, you can rack up tens or hundreds of thousands of Capital One miles just from signing up for a card like the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card or the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, making this bonus a little more accessible.

You only have about three weeks to take advantage of this bonus – so make sure you hunt down some deals before it’s too late.

🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

We asked you which U.S. airport topped the list for mega-airport satisfaction in 2025.

And the correct answer is… Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP)! ✈️

For the second year in a row, MSP snagged the top spot for airports with more than 33 million annual passengers, scoring 660 on J.D. Power’s 1,000-point scale.

That’s pretty crazy given record-breaking crowds and long TSA lines across North America this past year.

Soooo, why do people love it, you ask? MSP recently finished some big projects that helped with terminal facilities, food options, and overall travel. We’re talking local restaurants, smoother check-ins, and so on.

And ok, this is insane — passengers who described their airport experience as “perfect” spent an average of $42 in the terminal. 

Apparently, a better vibe means spending more on an airport IPA? 🤦‍♂️

MSP beat out Detroit (DTW) and Phoenix (PHX), which came in second and third, and you can read the entire list here.

That’s gonna do it for today, friendos!

I know today was a little tedious with all of that math… but leveraging these crazy deals is exactly the kind of nerdy stuff that gets you flying and staying around the world for free.

Take care and see you tomorrow,

13.7563° N, 100.5018° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt