🌎 Two new global award sales

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 29 seconds

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the escape room of newsletters – you’ll feel lost for a bit, then weirdly proud when it all clicks.

Let’s get into it:

• ✈️ Global Getaways are back: Warm destinations, wild deals

• 💳 Earn Bilt points from shopping on Rakuten

• 🌎 Another global award sale (not mad about it)

• 🔄 Current transfer bonuses

✈️ Global Getaways are back: Warm destinations, wild deals

Alaska’s back with another Global Getaways sale — and this time the theme is “Summer Isn’t Over.” 🌴

Translation? You can snag award flights to sunny, beachy destinations across the world for way fewer Atmos points than usual — and there’s zero catch.

Here’s a taste of what’s on sale right now (all one-way rates):

• Manila (MNL) – 25,000 points

• Bangkok (BKK) – 30,000 points

• Hong Kong (HKG) – 30,000 points

• Auckland (AKL) – 35,000 points

• Sydney (SYD) – 35,000 points

• Cook Islands (RAR) – 35,000 points (woah)

The only details you need to know are to book by November 11 for travel through March 30, 2026. Nice and simple. 👌

If you’ve ever dreamed of New Zealand, this is the time to make it happen. A round-trip to Auckland for 70,000 Atmos points on airlines like American or Qantas (even from the East Coast!) is… wild.

And since Auckland happens to have a gorgeous The Edit hotel (a.k.a. a luxury property booked through [[ chase-sapphire-preferred-card.issuer.name ]]’s travel portal), you can double-dip your travel wins.

Two nights at the Cordis, Auckland will run you $320 total — but if you use your Edit credit from the [[ chase-sapphire-reserve.name ]], you’ll only pay about $70 out of pocket and still get breakfast for two, plus a $100 property credit.

Meanwhile, Bangkok fans — rejoice.

It’s already tough to find good-value award flights to Thailand, so 30k one-way is genuinely great. I was just there a few days ago and stayed at the Volve Hotel Bangkok — a quiet little World of Hyatt property in Sukhumvit that ran me $93 a night and was *chef’s kiss* perfection.

Oh, and remember two days ago when I told you how to plan a Hong Kong and Macao trip?

Yeah, now you’ve got the perfect way to fly there for fewer miles than the Cathay deal I mentioned.

But the wild card of this whole sale? The Cook Islands (time to bust out Google Maps).

You can fly there for 35k one-way on Hawaiian Airlines via Honolulu, which is a pretty cool deal.

It’s one of the most unique, offbeat warm destinations you can reach using points, and it’s absolutely bucket-list-worthy.

Atmos points aren’t the easiest to rack up, but thankfully, Bilt Rewards transfers 1:1 to Atmos – and as you’ll see in the next section, earning Bilt points just got a lot easier. 😉

💳 Earn Bilt points from shopping on Rakuten

Okay, this is actually big.

Bilt just teamed up with Rakuten, meaning you can now earn Bilt Rewards points instead of cash back when shopping at over 3,500 stores through Rakuten.

That’s right. Your Black Friday shopping spree can now earn you Hyatt nights and Atmos points.

Here’s why this partnership matters:

Bilt’s transfer partners (like World of Hyatt and Atmos Rewards) are incredible – but earning Bilt points outside of rent and card spend has always been kind of limited.

This Rakuten link-up changes that in a big way.

And there’s a nice cherry on top:

You’ll get 2,500 bonus Bilt points when you link your accounts (and sign up for Rakuten through the Bilt app), and make your first $25+ purchase through Rakuten. Easy money.

Now, there is one thing that gives me pause…

Bilt says $10 of Rakuten cash back = 1,000 Bilt points – but only for the first six months.

That’s a perfectly fair 1:1 conversion (same as earning Membership Rewards points through Rakuten), but they’ve already called it “introductory,” which suggests it’ll drop later.

Even if it falls to, say, 800 points per $10 cash back, it could still be a great deal thanks to how valuable Bilt’s transfer partners are.

But I’ll be watching this one closely. 👀

Anyway, this is the rare “shop and earn travel” moment that doesn’t require any acrobatics. Just link your Rakuten account in the Bilt app, choose Bilt points as your preferred earning currency in Rakuten, and go buy the stuff you were gonna buy anyway.

Because if your online shopping addiction is gonna thrive, it might as well be earning you a trip to New Zealand. 🇳🇿

🌎 Another global award sale (not mad about it)

Another award sale…? In THIS economy??

At this point, the travel gods must be in a generous mood — because yet another major airline just dropped an award sale.

This time it’s American Airlines, and it’s actually kind of wild. You can now book one-way Main Cabin flights starting at:

• 7,500 miles within the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America

• 16,000 miles to South America

• 17,500 miles to Europe

• 20,000 to 25,000 miles to Asia, the Middle East, India, and even New Zealand and Australia

• Check out the full sale details and pricing here.

Bookings are open now through November 16, for travel between January 12 and February 28, 2026 — so this is very much a “plan ahead and win big later” kind of situation.

To put it into perspective, you could fly from Dallas to Paris for just 17,500 miles, or from Philadelphia to Santiago for 16,000 miles.

You could also snag Miami to Mexico City or Charlotte to St. Lucia, both for just 7,500 miles.

I know, it sounds made up. But AA’s running this as part of a huge winter sale, and there are over a million discounted Main Cabin seats across all of these regions.

And before you roll your eyes at the “Main Cabin” part — this is still a crazy good value, especially if you’ve got an AA co-branded card, or ThankYou points, which you can transfer to AA at a 1:1 ratio.

Honestly, this might be the best opportunity we’ve seen all year to burn some AA miles without the usual heartbreak of dynamic pricing, though it is a little weird to see them competing with Alaska’s sale so brazenly when they’re in the same alliance.

So if you’ve been waiting for a sign to finally book that winter getaway… this is it.

Make sure to book by November 16 — and maybe send me a postcard from Paris while you’re at it. 💋

And with that, I bid you adieu for the week. Take care and have a lovely weekend.

Goodbyeeeee,

22.1987° N, 113.5439° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt