🛫 Double Southwest points (ends today)

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 55 seconds

☀️ Good morning from the Big Apple — New York City! 🍎

While I debate for the tenth time whether I need a bagel or a slice (answer: both), here are some fresh travel tips for you beautiful people:

• 🛫 Double points on Southwest (but hurry)

• 🎁 Win a Daily Drop hoodie

• 🏨 Stack alert: Save 10% (or more) on HotelTonight

• 🍁 Get cozy with a new language this fall

• 🔄 3 new transfer bonuses to know about

• 🎥 Inside a billionaire’s palace (bookable with points)

🛫 Double points on Southwest (but hurry)

Southwest just dropped a short-but-sweet deal: until the end of the day today (October 6), you’ll earn 2x Rapid Rewards points on paid flights.

Here’s the fine print in plain English:

• You have to register before booking.

• Flights must be booked by October 6 (today) and flown by December 17.

• Only paid fares count (not award flights, Companion Pass, or package deals).

Normally, you’ll earn between 2 to 14 Southwest points per dollar, depending on your fare type. With this bonus, you’ll pull in as many as 28 points per dollar on premium fares.

Even on the cheapest fares, you’ll still get double the haul — and those points add up fast when you’re booking family travel or holiday flights.

And if you have a Southwest co-branded card, use it to pay for your flight. You’ll stack the card’s earning rate on top of this promo, essentially triple-dipping toward your next free flight.

🎁 Win a Daily Drop hoodie

We want to learn more about your travel habits, preferences, and style so we can make Daily Drop even better.

And if you take a few minutes to fill out our reader survey this week, you’ll also be entered to win a cozy Daily Drop hoodie or sweatshirt so you can look super stylish like this guy. 👇

Here’s the deal:

• Three winners will be chosen at random

• Submit your survey responses by October 13

• Winners announced on October 14 (we’ll reach out directly)

🏨 Stack alert: Save 10% (or more) on HotelTonight

If you’ve been eyeing a last-minute hotel stay, this one’s worth a quick check.

A few members of the Daily Drop team were targeted with a 10% off HotelTonight offer through PayPal, valid until tomorrow, October 7, at 3:00 p.m. EST.

To see if you’ve got it:

1. Log in to your PayPal account → Wallet → Offers

2. If you spot the HotelTonight deal, click “Use offer”

3. Then book your stay through HotelTonight and check out with PayPal — the discount will apply automatically.

It’s an easy stack with HotelTonight’s existing Airbnb partnership, which gives you 10% back in Airbnb credit on every booking.

Combine the two and you’re looking at a double-dip worth roughly 20% off your stay — not bad for a few clicks.

Since your purchase will code as “travel” (yes, even when checking out with PayPal), make sure you use a card with high travel earning rates to maximize your rewards. 👍

🔄 3 new transfer bonuses to know about

We’re officially in “transfer bonus overload” season — programs keep tossing out deals faster than we can track them.

But a few are worth pulling the trigger on if you’ve got travel in the pipeline. Here are three of the juiciest:

30% bonus from ThankYou points to Virgin Atlantic (through Oct. 18)

Virgin Atlantic miles already shine for flights to Europe, but this 30% bonus from ThankYou points makes them ridiculous.

U.S. to Europe awards can be extremely cheap, especially from the East Coast. I just ran a search from Washington D.C. (IAD) to London (LHR) and found plenty of availability at the following rates:

• Economy: 6,000 miles (4,600 ThankYou points)

• Premium Economy: 10,500 miles (8,000 ThankYou points)

• Business: 29,000 miles (22,300 ThankYou points)

All of those rates are absolutely bonkers and WELL worth the price. If you’re bringing a companion or the whole family along, those savings stack up fast.

30% bonus from Ultimate Rewards points to Avios (through Oct. 31)

Avios are the Swiss Army knife of points.

You can use them to book Qatar Airways Qsuites to the Middle East (70,000 Avios in biz, now 54,000 Ultimate Rewards points), domestic flights on American Airlines, or even a cheeky hop to London on British Airways.

No matter which Avios flavor you prefer (BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus), you’re getting a 30% discount across the board — and that kind of flexibility is rare.

80% bonus from Ultimate Rewards points to IHG (through Oct. 22)

I’ll be honest: this one is a bit of a mixed bag.

Yes, it’s not the 100% bonus from Ultimate Rewards points we saw earlier this year, but 80% is still nothing to sneeze at — especially if you can pair it with IHG’s 4th-night-free perk from holding the [[ ihg-rewards-premier-credit-card.name ]].

For example, the new voco Times Square here in NYC goes for as few as 15,000 IHG points per night.

With this transfer bonus, that’s just 8,300 Ultimate Rewards points per night — far less than you’d burn on World of Hyatt or Marriott Bonvoy in the same neighborhood.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen quite so many transfer bonuses going on at one time. So check them out, see what lines up with your travels, and pull the trigger before it’s too late.

🎥 Inside a billionaire’s palace (bookable with points)

Perched high in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, Kasbah Tamadot looks like something out of a dream — and it kind of is.

It’s a Virgin Limited Edition property owned by Richard Branson himself, but here’s the twist: you can actually book it with points using a little-known strategy.

In this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, we’ll take you behind the scenes of this crazy property — from jaw-dropping views to what it’s really like to live like a billionaire (without paying like one). 👇

That’s all for today, folks! Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in the far north on a different continent.

Until then, have a great day. 🫶

40.6782° N, 73.9442° W

With contributions by Tiffany Eastham, McKay Moffitt, and Benji Stawski