✈️ Book with me: oneworld edition

Estimated read time: 5 minutes and 37 seconds

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop!

Let’s get you up to speed on the latest in the points and miles world:

• ✈️ Book with me: oneworld edition

• 🏨 Earn 30,000 bonus Hyatt points

• 👕 The perfect travel shirt does exist

✈️ Book with me: oneworld edition

I’ve got a trip coming up soon, and since I hadn’t been back in a few years, I decided I wanted to stop in Sri Lanka again for a few days.

So the other day, I needed to book a flight from Colombo back home to Jakarta on a specific day… and there was really only one flight that made sense:

A nonstop flight on Sri Lankan Airlines. And obviously, I wanted to fly business class. 😎

Listen… I love a comfy business-class seat as much as the next guy, but I do not love paying a grand for a flight that’s under five hours long.

Thankfully, Sri Lankan Airlines is part of the oneworld alliance, alongside airlines like Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and more.

That means you can often book Sri Lankan flights through a bunch of different points programs.

And depending on which program you use, the price can vary dramatically.

So instead of just paying cash, I decided to go program-shopping to see which oneworld airline offered the best deal for this exact same seat on this exact same flight.

Let’s walk through it.

Stop #1: Atmos Rewards

My first stop was Atmos Rewards.

I use Atmos a lot because:

• I earn status when redeeming points

• I already have a ton of points sitting there

• They often have surprisingly solid award pricing

Unfortunately, this was one of those weird times when Atmos ended up having the grimmest pricing. 👇

The flight is priced at 50,000 points and over $100 in fees in business class.

Now, to be clear, that’s not horrendous for business class. If this were the only option, I’d still consider it.

But when I’m booking oneworld flights, I know there’s usually a decent chance another partner program can do better… so the search continued.

Stop #2: American Airlines

Next up: American Airlines AAdvantage.

This one immediately looked a lot more attractive at 40,000 miles plus about $120 in taxes.

That’s already a pretty meaningful improvement over Atmos.

There was just one small problem:

I don’t really have a way to get points into American Airlines right now.

AA is a transfer partner of ThankYou points, of which I have exactly 0. And I don’t have many AA miles sitting in my account, sadly.

So while this was technically a better deal… it wasn’t an option for me.

Stop #3: Qatar Avios

Then we arrive at Qatar Airways Privilege Club, where things started getting interesting.

Last year, there was a transfer bonus to Avios, and I may or may not have transferred over 300,000 points like a raccoon preparing for winter. 😬

Thankfully, that hoarding paid off big time, as I’ve been redeeming my Qatar Avios for some amazing deals, like this one.

Qatar priced the exact same Sri Lankan flight at just 38,750 Avios and around $58 in taxes.

That’s a really strong deal:

• Lower taxes than American

• Fewer points than Atmos

• Easy booking process

• And I already had the points ready to go

I love Avios because you can transfer them freely between airlines like British Airways, Qatar, Iberia, and Finnair.

And since every major credit card program transfers to at least one of those, you always have access to all of them.

One final check: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

But before booking anything, I always like to check one last program for oneworld flights:

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles.

Asia Miles can have some really good pricing on short and medium-haul premium cabin flights, especially around Asia. I figured it was worth a quick look.

And yep – as expected, it technically had the best award rate of them all:

37,000 miles, which you can transfer from MR Points, Capital One miles, Bilt Rewards, ThankYou points, and even Wells Fargo Rewards.

At first glance, that seems like the obvious winner.

Butttttttt…..

The taxes came out to a whopping $219.

In the end, I booked through Qatar instead. And here’s why:

I’d much rather spend an extra 1,750 points than pay an extra $161 in cash.

It’s a great example of how the lowest points price is not automatically the best redemption.

🏨 Earn 30,000 bonus Hyatt points

As you know, World of Hyatt dropped a major bomb on us last week when they unveiled their new dynamic-ish award pricing.

Thankfully, it turned out not to be so bad.

Plus, to soften the blow a bit, they just launched a series of targeted promotions to offer bonus points, elite nights, and more.

Here’s my targeted offer (but go check your account to see what you have available, if anything):

Basically, I earn double points on stays of at least 2 nights for the next 90 days after registration.

Since I’m a Globalist, here is what I’ll be earning:

• 5x points for being a Hyatt member

• 5x points from this promotion

• 1.5x points for being Globalist

In total, I’ll be earning 11.5x points per dollar at Hyatt, which is a lot.

Plus, I’ll earn points from the credit card I use – which could seriously boost that number. Personally, I use this travel card to earn 4x UR points per dollar when booking hotels directly.

Since I can transfer those points to Hyatt, I’m effectively earning 15.5x points per dollar during this promo period.

Here’s a quick example:

In July, my friend and I will be in Sydney, Australia for a few days. The new Caption by Hyatt costs $138 per night, which is already pretty solid.

A 4-night stay here will cost me $552, but earn me a total of 8,556 points.

Plus, it’ll trigger my “2k Next Stay” award, bringing that up to 10,556 points.

Plus, it’ll put me at 40 Hyatt nights for the year – which will earn me another 5,000 points from the milestone reward:

After all is said and done, booking this stay will earn me over 15,000 points.

That’s enough to book another stay at a pretty nice Hyatt property like this one in Paris, France, which costs over $300 per night:

As you can see, this promotion (combined with milestone rewards, credit card points, and other things) can result in a pretty meaningful return on your spend with Hyatt this summer.

Make sure you check your accounts and register for any available offers.

That’s all for today, my friends.

Take care and see you first thing tomorrow. 🫡

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony, Katie Begnoche, and Alison Carrico.