✈️ My best Delta SkyMiles redemption

Estimated read time: 5 minutes 23 seconds

Good morning. It might be the end of the year, but Daily Drop is full speed ahead, my friends.

Let’s goooo:

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

• 🎄 My last-minute Christmas trip to Europe

• 💳 A super underrated portal

• 🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The answer is hanging out near the bottom of the newsletter… you know the drill. 👀

🎄 My last-minute Christmas trip to Europe

Yesterday I made a joke in the newsletter about how Indonesia doesn’t quite have that “Christmas” vibe that I grew up with…

… so I decided to book a spontaneous trip to Amsterdam and Germany… four days from now. 😬

I used some airline and hotel programs that I almost NEVER use, and will be flying some of the world’s best (and newest) planes – all in business class.

1. Getting to Amsterdam

This part was easy, actually. I found unicorn award space from Bali (DPS) to Amsterdam (AMS) on KLM in their sexy business suites with closing doors. 🦄

Specifically, I booked this for 80,000 Delta SkyMiles and $24, which is AMAZING – and exactly why I recently took a Delta upgrade offer to rack up some easy SkyMiles.

This flight stops in Singapore, but I get to stay in my seat without disembarking.

19 hours in a fully enclosed suite for 80k miles is one of the better deals I’ve booked this year!

Now here’s a fun tip:

I went to KLM’s website to select my seat, and saw that there was just one window seat still available… which costs $176 to select. 🤮

But I’m a smart boy, so I decided to book this seat for FREE. 😼

You see, I have SkyTeam Elite Plus status with Garuda Indonesia (one of the easier programs to earn alliance status with).

So I removed my Delta SkyMiles number from the booking and added my Garuda Indonesia number.

And because of that elite status, the same exact seat became free. 👇

This same concept applies to tons of alliance airlines.

Even if you are booking an award ticket and even if you’re in business class, there can still be perks to making sure the most optimal frequent flier number is attached to your booking.

Even though I haven’t flown Delta in ages and don’t plan to, this is exactly why I still rack up SkyMiles.

When you use them for partner airlines, you can find some amazing deals.

2. Last-minute hotels

In Amsterdam, I booked four nights at an Accor Live Limitless property. I’ll be there for Christmas, so I wanted something at least somewhat nice.

I had 27,000 Accor points chilling in my account, so I only needed to transfer 22,000 Capital One miles to have enough to cover almost this entire stay.

In the end, I have to pay €16 out of pocket. For four nights in Amsterdam during Christmas? I’ll take it.

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn’t ignore Accor!

From Amsterdam, I booked a train to Cologne, Germany. Word on the street is that sometimes the Cologne Christmas markets are still open until the end of December.

Anywho, I booked three nights at a Lindner Hotel, just steps away from the Cologne Cathedral, for just 6,500 World of Hyatt points per night:

Finally, my last night will be in Düsseldorf (you’ll see why in a sec 😉) at the Me and All hotel.

This one is a new Hyatt brand for me… so I’ll be one step closer to unlocking another Free Night Award with Hyatt’s Brand Explorer promotion. 😎

At around $90 per night, I just paid cash for this one:

And that takes us to an unexpected gift for the journey home…

3. Swiss’ new A350 business class

Swiss recently started introducing new Airbus A350s into their fleet.

It includes FIVE different types of business-class seats, massive first-class rooms, and it’s called “Swiss Senses.”

Only a few of these planes exist, and they obviously use them for long-haul routes…

… except one little baby flight every week from Düsseldorf to Zurich, which lasts all of 75 minutes.

I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that this is a “crew familiarization” flight, where they use shorter routes for crews to practice service on new cabin types.

It also happened to be an extremely good deal, because I booked this as part of a larger itinerary to Singapore for just 65,000 Lufthansa miles, all in business:

Yesterday, I told you about using Rove to earn thousands of miles on hotel bookings.

And that is exactly what I’ve been doing with my own hotel stays, and why I was able to transfer them to Lufthansa and book this (albeit with some hefty taxes and fees).

If you’re really cool and want to fly that new Swiss flight on the cheap, you can even book that route (including on the A350) for just 15,000 Aeroplan points in business class.👇

Anyway, the onward flight to Singapore is on New Year’s Eve, so I’ll be somewhere over the Balkans as the clock strikes midnight this year.

For a travel junkie like me, I can’t think of a better place to ring in the New Year!

💳 A super underrated portal

Okay, I need to take a sec and talk about what I think is a super underrated credit card perk…

I’m talking about Capital One Offers – the portal you get access to when you hold a miles-earning Capital One card.

Here’s the deal:

Capital One offers will award you bonus miles for shopping at all kinds of retailers that you already shop with – including many hotels, airlines, and other travel sites.

For example, let’s take the Hilton offer from the screenshot above.

If you spent $500 at Hilton hotels, you’d earn an additional 3,000 Capital One miles just from booking through this portal.

That’s on top of:

• Credit card points

• Hilton Honors points (by being a member)

• Promotions, elite bonuses, etc.

Those 3,000 miles can be transferred to partners or redeemed for a flat one cent per point toward travel.

In other words, you’re getting a minimum of $30 of value back.

If you start to think of how often you can use this throughout the year (Walmart, Target, your new laptop from Apple, and your cash travel), you can see how this perk alone might justify holding a Capital One card.

Take the [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.name ]].

It has a [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.annual-fee ]] annual fee, but comes with lounge access, travel protections, a $300 annual travel credit, and even 10,000 bonus anniversary miles.

For most people, that makes it feel like you’re “breaking even.”

But throw in the value you get from shopping in this portal, and now it suddenly looks a lot more exciting.

Oh, and it’s also offering [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.signup-bonus-miles ]] [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.issuer.points-program.bonus-points-text ]] for signing up right now… so there’s that.

Anyway, whether you want the [[ capital-one-venture-x-rewards-credit-card.casual-card-name ]] or its little brother, I think Capital One Offers are freaking awesome.

🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

If you guessed Colombia, you nailed it. 🇨🇴

Google data shared with Travel + Leisure and crowned Colombia the top digital nomad destination in the world for 2026.

Here’s why it stood out:

• A two-year digital nomad visa for remote workers

• One-bedroom apartments in cities like Medellín and Bogotá for under $400 to $500/month (cries in New York)

• Multiple cities rank among the most affordable in the world

• Coffee regions, beaches, food scenes, and plenty of “work-life balance” vibes

Rounding out Google’s top five were New Zealand, Costa Rica, Latvia, and Bulgaria.

Indonesia, Finland, Vietnam, Poland, and Slovenia also cracked the top 10, so if your laptop’s already halfway out the door, you’re in very good company.

Want to see the full list? Check it out here.

That’s all for today, my friends. I know today was a little longer, but I felt it was worth sharing all the dirty details of those tasty redemptions.

Take care and see you tomorrow 🫡

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by writer and USB-C fangirl McKay Moffitt