🏝️ Fly to Tahiti for 21k points

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 8 seconds

Good morning from beautiful Yogyakarta, where I’m enjoying a few days of relaxation and golf lessons.

Turns out I’m terrible at golf. Like, “Missed the ball three times in a row,” terrible. So, please send me some golf tips. In exchange, I’ll give you some travel tips:

• 🏨 Surprisingly good promo from Best Western

• ✈️ 20% transfer bonus to this unique program

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

🏨 Surprisingly good promo from Best Western

Best Western is a weird hotel chain… I used to think of it as depressing roadside motels from my road trip days.

But in the last couple of years, I’ve stayed at some Best Westerns that put other five-star hotels to shame.

And, more importantly, it occasionally offers excellent promotions, like this new one to earn up to 20,000 bonus points this summer.

When you stay three nights at Best Western hotels between now and September 1, you’ll earn 10,000 bonus points.

Here’s the fine print:

• You can do this twice and earn up to 20,000 bonus points

• You must register for the offer

• The three-night threshold can be from one stay or multiple stays

• Only valid for stays in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean

It’s very simple, and potentially rewarding.

For example, check out this hotel in San Diego — it looks quite nice and is much cheaper than many other properties in the area:

Best Western is great because most of its brands are budget-friendly. Taking advantage of these promos saves you money and offers you additional rewards.

On the redeeming side, Best Western hotels start at 8,000 points per night and rarely go above around 32,000 points per night.

So if you play your cards right, you could book an additional two nights with your 20,000 points and still have some left over:

Best Western has a ton of properties all over the world, including in places that don’t have any other chain hotel options.

For example, a couple of years ago, I spent two weeks at this Best Western in Lviv, Ukraine, and it was one of the best hotel stays of my life.

Heck, even in Yangon, Myanmar (where I’ll be heading tomorrow), Best Western is the only hotel chain with any properties… and they have THREE of them there.

So here’s the bottom line:

Best Western doesn’t have the sexiest brands or loyalty program… but you should pay attention to it when it offers outsize value for cheap stays like right now.

If you have travel planned in North America this summer, register for the offer and see if you can rake in some sweet, sweet points.

✈️ 20% transfer bonus to this unique program

Okay, here’s an interesting one…

While there are tons of ways to book Qantas flights with other programs, we rarely talk about Qantas’ own in-house award program.

As North Americans, there aren’t a ton of ways to really get outsize value out of it.

But when there’s a transfer bonus, it’s certainly worth paying attention to.

Oh, look at that. There’s a transfer bonus.

Until June 1, you can transfer Capital One miles to Qantas with a 20% bonus.

Generally speaking, it’s better to book Qantas flights with other programs like Avios or Flying Blue miles.

That said, I’ve found a few spots where Qantas actually beats those programs, especially with this 20% boost.

For example, if you want to plan an exotic trip to Tahiti, Qantas is actually the best way to do it, since you can fly nonstop on Air Tahiti Nui from Los Angeles (LAX) for just 25,200 Qantas miles:

That’s a pretty amazing deal, and it works out to exactly 21,000 Capital One miles with this transfer bonus to get all the way to Tahiti. Epic.

If you wanted to go a little further and head “down undah,” you could get from LAX to Sydney (SYD) for 41,900 miles on Qantas itself:

With the bonus, that’s just 35,000 Capital One miles to get all the way to Australia, which is pretty much as good as it gets.

Personally, I’ve already booked a flight on Qantas for later this year from Jakarta to Sydney, which only costs 20,000 Qantas miles.

With this transfer bonus, that’s only 17,000 Capital One miles, which is a great deal for a seven-hour flight that normally costs around $400.

I’ve also been eyeing a trip to Timor-Leste (aka the country nobody can find on a map unless they’re zoomed in).

There are only two places you can fly from to get to the country’s capital of Dili, one of which is Darwin, Australia, on… you guessed it… Qantas.

Despite being a short, one-hour flight, it costs almost $300 any day of the week.

Instead, I can transfer just over 6,000 Capital One miles, get the transfer bonus, and book this flight while paying just a fraction of the cash cost in taxes and fees.

So here’s the bottom line:

Qantas miles aren’t the flashiest, but with the right bonus and route, they punch way above their weight.

Since many of you have recently signed up for the [[ capital-one-venture-rewards-credit-card.name ]] because of the (recently deceased) epic welcome offer, this is just one way you can put those miles to good use.

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…or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. 😉

Well, my friends, this is where I must bid you adieu for the week. I hope you enjoyed all of the epic updates from the travel world this week.

Don’t sleep on Monday’s edition — it might just be your ticket to an island-hopping fantasy trip using points. 😉

Have a great weekend,

7.8014° S, 110.3648° E