🇮🇹 Award Drop: Italy for 38k points (biz class!)

Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 37 seconds

Good morning, ladies and gents—it’s Tiffany here. Mike is… well, he’ll fill you in when he’s back 🥴

But the show must go on, and here’s what we’ve got in the travel world today:

• 🇮🇹 Award Drop: Italy in UPPER-CLASS for 38k points

• 🍪 Travel Tidbits

• ✈️ The dilemma: Lufthansa business or first-class

🇮🇹 Award Drop: Italy | UPPER-CLASS | 38k points

Folks, we’re jet-setting to Italy. For CHEAP.

And this one is for all of you who prefer (or need to) plan your trips far in advance.

And that’s because there’s a lot of cheap award availability on Virgin Atlantic over to Italy starting in November through next March!

And honestly, there’s really no bad time of year to visit the land of la dolce vita, so this feels like a great win.

I frequently travel to and from Italy as it’s basically my second home, and I’ll soon be an Italian citizen (yay!!), so I’m constantly searching for flights.

For example, if you’re interested in heading there for the Christmas Markets later this year, there is solid award availability for November and December from Boston and Chicago to Rome for just 58,500 points in Virgin Atlantic’s snazzy upper-class 👇

The higher taxes and fees that are typical of Virgin are a bit of a downer, but it’s not a deal breaker in my opinion.

Additionally, I’m seeing even BETTER award availability and pricing for next February and March from cities like Miami and D.C. to both Rome and Milan 🙌

I’d already be pretty darn stoked to fly in business class for under 50k points, but… it gets better 😎

Remember that there are still TWO 30% transfer bonuses going on from both [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.points-program-override.points-currency ]] [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.points-program-override.points-currency-short ]] (ends June 15th) and [[ american-express-gold-card.points-program-override.points-currency ]] [[ american-express-gold-card.points-program-override.points-currency-short ]] (ends May 31st) to Virgin.

So you need just 38k points from either bank to reach the minimum 48,500 Virgin points needed to book one of those flights.

Italy is my absolute favorite country, but I am (admittedly) hella biased about it. Still, any trip to Italy is a good idea, no? 💁🏻‍♀️

So transfer those points, grab your espresso or your Spritz, and join the fast-walking, fast-talking Italians this fall, winter, or even next spring!

🍪 Travel Tidbits

🛍️ Get up to 25% cash-back with Rakuten’s newest Festival of Savings promo through May 13th! If you’re already a member, you’re eligible for a 15% cash-back bonus with 500+ participating stores. But if you’re a new member, sign up and enjoy that 10% cash-back boost we talked about last week PLUS this newest 15% bonus (25% total!).

🤝 JetBlue and Etihad expand their existing partnership to allow travelers to earn and redeem points from either loyalty program. If you’ve got a stash of either programs’ points (or a credit card that will transfer points to either airline), this opens up a ton of flexibility and award redemption opportunities.

🌿 Alaska Airlines confirms new permanent means of receiving Mileage Plan elite status credit by buying sustainable offsets. Alaska will offer 500 elite qualifying miles (EQMs) for every $100 spent to offset various amounts of your carbon impact. Tickets must be booked on alaskaair.com (maximum up to 5,000 EQMs per year).

💳 Qatar Airways just launched two new credit cards available in the U.S. One card comes with a premium price tag but more premium perks. The other is more modest but still offers decent earning rates. Intrigued? Check them out here.

📺 Lufthansa Business vs. First Class

In our newest YouTube video, Kara and Nate compare Lufthansa Business Class to Lufthansa First Class, breaking down all the sweet deets. 

The video will help you decide if shelling out an extra 30,000 points for first class is worth it.

And here at Daily Drop, we like to make things easy for you.

Turns out — we also have a step-by-step video for booking Lufthansa First Class using miles and points.

Combine the two videos and you should be a Lufthansa pro. 😎

Today was a fun one! I hope you enjoyed reading about that sweet award drop, our (newly formatted) travel tidbits, and that refresher about Lufthansa.

Ttyl ❤️

52°22'35.4"N 52°15'17.4"W