Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 50 seconds

Howdy, partners. Welcome back to Daily Drop, where we wrangle up the best deals and points tips, and package them up in a less-than-5-minute email.

Here’s how we’ll finish off this week:

• 🏨 Hilton’s exciting new brand

• ✈️ The easiest way to save points on flights

• ✌️ Peace of mind protection

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses 💳

🏨 Hilton’s exciting new brand

Hilton's portfolio has some new members, and they look like they were designed by someone who's seen the inside of a spaceship. 🚀

Back in March, Hilton announced an exclusive partnership with Yotel, making it the first brand under the new "Select by Hilton" umbrella.

Basically, this means that Yotel keeps running its own hotels its own way, but they participate in Hilton's booking system and loyalty program.

And as of a few days ago, this is no longer theoretical.

Yotels are starting to show up on Hilton's website, which means you can now earn and redeem Hilton points at them. Not every property is in the system yet, but all 23 hotels should be fully integrated by September.

Wait, what's a Yotel?

Yotel is a compact design hotel brand that started in London in 2007.

The rooms are small but smartly designed, with beds that convert to sofas at the push of a button and robots that store your luggage. There is also a lot of purple mood lighting. Like... a lot.

But the locations are the real selling point.

Yotels are almost always in one of two places: the middle of a big city, or inside an airport. That second category is what I’m personally excited about. 😉

The airport hotels are the biggest unlock

I stayed at the Yotel inside Istanbul Airport a few years ago during an overnight layover, and it was one of the most convenient hotel stays of my life. You walk off your plane and straight into a bed, no immigration, no taxi.

And honestly, it was pretty comfy too.

The catch, at the time: that one night cost me almost $200.

And that, my friends, is where this partnership shines. Overnight layovers in airport hotels are exactly the kind of place I want to burn points, and Hilton now allows that to happen.

At the very least, it would’ve been nice to earn Hilton points even when I do use cash for a place like that.

The cheap ones are really cheap

Plenty of Yotels sit firmly in budget territory, too.

The Yotel Bangkok is already bookable through Hilton at $59 per night with a launch discount, or around 24,000 points.

$59 for a modern chain hotel where you're also earning Hilton points and getting Hilton benefits is hard to argue with.

Even stateside, the pricing is looking pretty good. The Yotel Miami starts at $117 per night, or 36,000 points for a Premium Queen. For a chain hotel in a major U.S. city, that's a rate you don't see often.

One heads up on that Miami rate: it includes a $37 per night resort charge… but that’s just another reason it’s great to use points, since doing so removes that resort fee as well.

The bottom line

I've been racking up a lot of Hilton points lately, so I'm excited to have 23 new places to spend them, especially the ones parked inside airport terminals.

And if you want to build a Hilton stash of your own, the fastest way is to pick up a Hilton credit card, all of which have elevated limited-time welcome offers ending soon. 🎉

✈️ The easiest way to save points on flights

Here's a hard truth about award travel: the amazing deals almost never leave from your home airport.

That business-class sweet spot everyone's raving about? It departs from New York. You live in Kansas City. Cool cool cool.

This is where positioning flights come in.

What's a positioning flight?

It's exactly what it sounds like: a separate, cheap flight to get you where the good deal actually starts.

For example, check out this amazing deal from Vancouver to Seoul on Korean Airways business class. It’s just 85,000 Virgin Atlantic miles and $43 in taxes and fees!!

Plus, there’s a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin right now. So you can transfer 65,000 MR points to fly in lie-flat business for 12 hours across the Pacific! So cool!

But wait… you live in Las Vegas. That’s not even the same country as Vancouver… 💀

No worries. Just book this $122 positioning flight the night before.

Now you’re paying 65,000 points and $170 to fly from Vegas to Korea almost entirely in a lie-flat seat.

Compare that to the points price of booking a single ticket from Las Vegas to Korea through programs like American, United, or Delta, and you can see why this strategy pays off:

As with everything in life, there are caveats to booking positioning flights. Thankfully, I wrote a newsletter a while back breaking down all of those caveats (and how to protect yourself from the downsides):

PRESENTED BY SURFSHARK

✌️ Peace of mind protection

I feel like we’ve shared a lot of trending travel news lately about the latest travel scams and how to avoid them.

Cause let’s be real, scammers are gonna scam.

So all we can do is try to keep protecting ourselves, outsmarting them, and staying one step ahead.

That’s where Surfshark comes in.

They’re a VPN provider that allows you to safely navigate public WiFi, protecting your data online from anyone with nefarious intentions.

What does that look like?

• Paying that overdue bill you forgot about while out for dinner.

• Transferring points from your bank to rebook a cancelled flight while stuck at the airport.

• Using your credit card info to book a hotel online while at the coffee shop.

All without anyone online being able to take a peek at your sensitive info. 😎

Surfshark makes it pretty easy, too.

Just create an account, install the extension or download the app, turn it on, and boom, instant protection.

And you can use it on unlimited devices, meaning you can work on your laptop and check bank statements on your phone and know your info is safe, wherever you go.

That’s the peace of mind I think we could all use a little more of these days!

Keep your data safe and go to surfshark.com/dailydrop or use code DAILYDROP at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN.

💳 Current Transfer Bonuses 💳

That’s all for this week, folks. Have a lovely weekend and see you first thing Monday morning.

Byeeeeeee

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.