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✈️ The best travel hack you aren't currently using
Plus, I'll tell you about how miles and points helped me to do a drastic last-minute change to my trip in Europe, and we'll finish off the day with a quick hack.
Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 47 seconds
🌎 The Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex in New Jersey – a monumental Hindu temple, is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, housing over 10,000 statues. Read more about it here.
Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the first newsletter to be certified as a member of Mensa.
Not really, but I say smart things once in a while.
Here’s what we’ve got cooking today:
🏃🏼♂️ Mike on the Move: I left Scotland abruptly
✈️ The best travel hack you aren’t using yet
💳 Quick hacks: earn an extra 500 Hyatt points per night
🏃🏼♂️ Mike on the Move: I’m leaving Scotland abruptly
Remember last week when I told you about my trip to Scotland?
Yeah, that’s all obsolete now.
After spending some time here, it turns out I’m not a huge fan of Scotland. 🤷🏼♂️
I know I’ll probably get some backlash for that, but that’s okay. I deserve it, so bring it on.
Now, I’m on my way to the airport to fly over to Prague, the “city that never sleeps,” as they say. Or maybe I’m getting that mixed up. Whatever.
Thankfully, points and miles make it easy to change plans at the last minute, so I was able to book a last-minute flight from here in Glasgow to Prague for only 7,500 Aeroplan points.
Considering the last-minute change and niche route, I didn’t mind paying a few extra bucks in taxes and fees to make this work out.
Especially because of the CRAZY deal I got on a hotel…
You may remember a few weeks ago when I was telling you about the power of Hyatt points, and how you can book hotels for as few as 3,500 points all over the world.
As it turns out, one of those very properties is in Prague.
So I booked a 5-night stay for me and my friend for a grand total of only 22,000 Hyatt points, which is one of the better deals I’ve ever seen in my life.
Since I have Hyatt Globalist status, both my friend and I get free breakfast, late checkout, and a tasty room upgrade, among other things.
This is a perfect example of why I tell people to start collecting [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.points-program-override.points-currency ]] with credit cards like the [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.name ]].
With the welcome offer alone on that card, you’d be able to book almost 15 nights at the property I mentioned. Even if your day-to-day spending is low, 3,500 points for a hotel night is something anyone can collect enough points for with normal levels of spending over time.
It’s just a ridiculous way to travel hack, so definitely add a card that earns [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.points-program-override.points-currency ]] Points to your wallet sometime.
So overall, I was able to change my trip at the last minute for under $100 in cash and ended up SAVING points by canceling my hotels in Scotland and booking this cheap Hyatt property.
Just another great example of the power of points and miles.
✈️ The best travel hack you aren’t using yet
Truth be told, travel costs money. Lots of money. You can certainly lower those costs with some solid travel-hacking tips (ahem, enter miles and points), but we’re not talking about that special golden currency in this section…
Instead, I want to tell you about a travel hack that anybody can do RIGHT NOW that will start saving them cold, hard cash.
I’m talking, of course, about the Capital One Shopping browser extension.
If you aren’t aware of this magical tool, then let me give you two quick points:
You do NOT need to bank with Capital One or have any of their products to use this.
It’s free.
No credit card or other points bologna required
You can read our article if you want to learn more about it. 🤗
Did I mention it’s free…?
If you want to see examples of some of the specific deals I’ve gotten in the past, check out this newsletter. You might be surprised by how drastic some of them are…
Basically, here is how it works:
Wait for them to send you crap tons of amazing deals from hotel chains, clothing brands, and other travel retailers
Rejoice when you save a bunch of money (see gif below)
This will be you after saving a bunch of money.
And to be clear, this tool will give you offers on everything from hotels like IHG and Hyatt to sites like Viator, Expedia, and even Amazon… and all kinds of other stuff that have nothing to do with travel.
The point is this:
Sometimes, the best travel hacks are the ones that have nothing to do with miles and points, and just save you money instead.
So just sign up for this free browser extension and you’ll start getting insane offers like this over time.
Unlike most portals, this tool offers SIGNIFICANT value that will add up very quickly in a short period of time!
💳 Quick hacks: earn an extra 500 Hyatt points per night
Here’s a quick hack for you:
You can earn 500 points per night at various hotels that are “new” to Hyatt’s portfolio.
Hyatt updates this list regularly, and there’s no need to register, have elite status, book any special rate, or anything. As long as you’re a WoH member, you’ll get the bonus points in addition to any other normal points and bonus points you earn.
You can see the full list here.
So if you’re traveling to a city that has one of these new hotels, consider choosing one of the properties on the list to rack up some meaningful bonus points.
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…or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. 😉
That’s all for today, amigos. I told you about my travels this week, but I want to hear from you. So tell me:
Do you have any travel plans this week?If so, tell me about them! |
Have a great Monday ❤️