✈️ Portal Kombat 2: Battle of the 10x cash back

Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 18 seconds

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the black coffee of newsletters. We’re straightforward, wake you up in the morning, and always leave you wanting more.

In today’s news:

• 💰 Rakuten: Earn 10x cash back (or points back) on travel sites

• 🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• ✈️/🏨 Marriott and United team up for a dual promo

💰 Rakuten: Earn 10x cash back (or points back) on travel sites

It’s been a while since we talked about Rakuten because there simply hasn’t been much newsworthy activity going on.

It’s like Canadian politics. Everyone forgets about it until that one exciting event happens that gets the crows roaring.

And today, there’s a Trudeau divorce-level piece of news to share about Rakuten, because they are offering 10% cashback on a bunch of different travel sites.

10% cash back is effectively a 10% discount on travel through these sites, which is always a welcome deal.

To make the pot even sweeter, if you have a card that earns Membership Rewards points, you can actually earn those points instead of cash back.

So, effectively, your 10% cash back will become 10x points when using the Rakuten portal.

And this doesn’t just apply to third-party travel agencies, it includes some major hotel brands that we love like IHG.

But wait… THERE’S MORE.

If you haven’t signed up for Rakuten yet and use our link to sign up, you can get a little welcome offer of $30 cash back after making a purchase of $30 or more, on top of these 10% or 10x rewards…

If you need a little more insight into how portals (and Rakuten) work, check out our guide here.

So yeah. This is definitely a great chance to earn a hefty return on travel purchases. I’ll be looking at upcoming bookings of mine to see if I can rebook at the same price through Rakuten!

🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• 💯 This airline just turned 100 years old

• 🐻 It’s fat bear week. Check it out, it’s kinda fun…

• ✈️ Southwest is having a mini sale on their points if you need to top up your balance!

✈️/🏨 Marriott and United team up for a dual promo

There are some duos in history that change the very fabric of society with how awesome they are. Simon and Garfunkel, Bonnie and Clyde, Mario and Luigi, pickles and whiskey (trust me).

Well, this next duo is not one of those. Not by a long shot.

But it’s still pretty sweet…

Marriott and United have teamed up to offer elite members a dual promotion where travelers will be rewarded by both programs when using either one of them.

Before I get into the details, this is for higher-up elites in either program. You’ll need to have Marriott Titanium or higher to get United benefits or United Gold or higher to get Marriott benefits.

Here are the details:

• When you stay at a Marriott hotel, you’ll earn 500 bonus United miles per stay

• When you fly with United, you’ll earn 750 bonus Marriott points for each itinerary (not each flight)

• You need to link your accounts and register for this offer

• Stays and flights need to be completed by December 9th, 2023

This promo falls into the category of, “Just take one minute and register for it, and you might get some nice bonus points or miles, but don’t go too far out of your way for this.”

Personally, I have Marriott Titanium and United Gold, so I’ll definitely end up pulling in some free bonus points with no effort at all.

If you want to get some quick United status, you can also do a status match from another program, get temporary United status, and get some bonus points.

This is very similar to the partnership between Hyatt and American, who recently dropped a couple of solid reciprocal promotions.

Seeing more partnerships like this trying to offer value to travelers in the form of both hotel points and airline miles is awesome, and continues to give us all more options, regardless of which program you might be loyal to.

In case you didn’t know, we started a podcast. It’s called the Daily Drop Podcast.

Every week (and sometimes more often), Megan and I sit down to talk about travel hacking in a way that we simply don’t have space to do in this newsletter.

We think it’s a lot of fun, so check it out by clicking here, going on YouTube, or searching for us wherever you get your podcasts.

That’s gonna finish off this day, folks.

Take care and I’ll see you tomorrow to finish off the week ❤️

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