🛍️ 1 point = big Amazon savings

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 11 seconds

☀️ Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop — the newsletter that hoards points the way your grandma hoards Tupperware lids: chaotically, but somehow it all works out.

Here’s today’s travel chaos:

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

• 📚 Redeem 1 point, save big on back-to-school gear

• 🙌 Keep calm and carry… LMNT

• 🏨 Turn your points into free nights in Scandinavia

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The answer is at the bottom of today’s newsletter.

📚 Redeem 1 point, save big on back-to-school gear

If you’ve got a card that earns Ultimate Rewards points, you might have access to a little-known Amazon trick that can turn a single point (or just a handful of points) into a serious discount on back-to-school shopping.

It’s called Shop with Points — and while the name is boring, the savings are very real.

This trick is just like the one we shared for redeeming Membership Rewards points on Amazon.

Here’s how it works:

• Link your cards to your Amazon account.

• Amazon rolls out targeted offers that give you chunky discounts when you use points at checkout.

• The catch? You don’t actually need to spend a lot of points.

Depending on the promotion, you generally only need to apply a small amount of points (often just a few hundred or less) to unlock the discount, then pay the rest with your card.

If you’re able to trigger a hefty discount, this could be the single best-value use of point(s) you’ll ever have.

A quick example

Let’s say you’re grabbing a $50 backpack for your kid (or yourself — we don’t judge 😉).

• You’re targeted for 50% off by redeeming 500 Ultimate Rewards points

• Apply 500 points at checkout

• Boom: $25 off instantly

That’s $25 of value for 500 Ultimate Rewards points — an epic five cents per point in value, which is more than double the two to three cents we usually usually aim for.

Heads up

• Not every product will trigger a discount

• Offers vary widely and are targeted — if you see a blank screen or can’t “activate” it, then you’re not eligible

• You’ll need to link your Ultimate Rewards point-earning card to Amazon if you haven’t already (takes 30 seconds).

Don’t care about back-to-school stuff? We’ve pulled together our favorite travel gear — much of which is sold on Amazon. Check it out if you want to try using this trick on travel gear instead.

🏨 Turn your points into free nights in Scandinavia

When SAS launched the EuroBonus Millionaire challenge last year, plenty of people thought it was impossible. But four of us on the Daily Drop team — along with dozens of readers — actually did it. We became EuroBonus Millionaires, each sitting on a mountain of points just waiting for the right opportunity.

Now, that opportunity has arrived.

SAS has teamed up with Scandic Hotels, one of Scandinavia’s largest hotel groups, and now lets you link accounts and transfer points back and forth.

The key detail: 1 SAS point = 2 Scandic Friends points. That’s huge, because Scandic uses a fixed award chart.

• Budget hotels start at 10,000 Scandic points (or 5,000 SAS points)

• Top-tier hotels max at 80,000 Scandic points (40,000 SAS)

Suddenly, those EuroBonus balances from last year’s challenge can unlock some insane value.

Take Stockholm, for example. One of my favorite neighborhoods in the city — Södermalm — is home to the Scandic Sjöfartshotellet. A night there costs 30,000 Scandic points, or just 15,000 SAS points. 👇

Or look at Bergen, Norway — a city that’s beautiful, but also notoriously expensive. With this new partnership, the Scandic Kokstad runs just 15,000 Scandic points, or 7,500 SAS points per night.

That’s about as close to a Scandinavian unicorn deal as you’ll ever find, and far cheaper than programs like Hilton Honors or Marriott Bonvoy.

Linking your accounts is simple: create a free Scandic Friends account, log into your SAS EuroBonus account, and click “Link SAS and Scandic accounts.”

Scandic is very Scandinavia-focused, so this won’t be relevant to everyone. But for the EuroBonus Millionaires among us, this is a phenomenal new way to stretch those points.

If you guessed Menorca Airport in the trivia question earlier, then ding ding ding! 🎉

With an almost perfect score of 95 out of 100, this island airport nails kid-friendly perks: four play areas, three nursing rooms, eight restaurants, and a crowd size small enough that you won’t need a GPS to get to your gate. 🙂

The Little Flyers Index ranked 117 airports worldwide on family amenities like rentable strollers, family security lines, and the all-important number of playgrounds.

Menorca beat spots like Riga, Warsaw, and Munich — and the top 20 didn’t include a single U.S. airport (though Memphis made it at #23).

So if you’re planning a European getaway with the kiddos, you might just want to route through Menorca. Read the full list here.

That’s all for today, folks! Trivia, unique uses of points, and free hotels in Scandinavia? Not a bad Tuesday. 😉

See you tomorrow,

3.3869° S, 36.6830° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt and Benji Stawski