🏨 Two VERY good hotel updates

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 44 seconds

Gooooooooood morning from Kolkata, India! 🇮🇳 I’ve got quite the travel week ahead of me… to say the least.

But today, I’ve also got quite the newsletter for you:

• 🙏🏼 Can you do a quick favor for me (please)?

• 💳 Marriott just added a sweet new benefit (and offer)

• 🏨 Marriott improves elite nights for budget brands

🙏🏼 Can you do a quick favor for me (please)?

Here at Daily Drop, I do my best to write about a variety of stuff for you guys.

But here’s the deal:

I can’t write about things that interest you and apply to you if I don’t know anything about you. 🤷🏼‍♂️

So, I have a favor to ask. And it’s a very easy favor. I need you to fill out this survey.

It’ll take you like zero minutes to do (roughly), but it will give me a clear idea of your travel style, preferences, current level of understanding, and more.

In other words, it’ll help make Daily Drop better for everyone. 🙂

We’ll even throw in a $50 gift card for three lucky winners (just make sure you enter your email at the end of the survey).

I’d really, really appreciate it if you could fill out the survey. Thank you in advance, compadres. 🫡

💳 Marriott just added a sweet new benefit (and offer)

I have a love/hate relationship with Marriott, personally. I have had so many horrific experiences with them, but I just keep coming back – for a few reasons.

One of those reasons is that they have some offers that are just too good to ignore.

For example, right now, you can earn FIVE free night awards (worth 50,000 points each) when signing up for the [[ the-marriott-bonvoy-boundless-card.name ]].

That means up to 250,000 points in value from that single low-fee card. Oh, and the spending requirement has gone down, making the offer accessible to more people – which we love.

To put this into perspective, there are tons of properties even in places like New York City that cost around 50,000 points a night.

If you wanted to plan a fun spring getaway to the Big Apple, this one [[ the-marriott-bonvoy-boundless-card.annual-fee ]] card could get you five full nights there for $0 and a few thousand extra points (since you can top up free night awards with up to 15,000 Marriott points each).

That’s crazy.

But there’s more…

You see, new AND existing cardholders also get a $100 airline credit for 2026.

I personally have the card and was able to instantly register for the new credits using this link.

Here’s how it works:

• Spend $250 or more on airfare, and get $50 back

• You can do this twice per year (every six months)

• Must book directly with the airline

I love this!!! I find that airfare credits like this are some of the easiest to use.

If you read this newsletter, you probably spend that much on a flight purchase at least once or twice a year… so you can think of this as getting $100 in easy value for your $95 card.

I have a trip to West Africa next month (the one where I booked Delta One to Senegal).

From Senegal, I need to get to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The only option is to fly Air Senegal for $318, which is pretty painful… but now I can shave $50 off that price thanks to this credit (yay!).

You could also use this when paying taxes and fees on an award ticket. I know a lot of you find it hard to swallow high taxes and fees when departing Europe on award tickets.

This credit is the perfect way to instantly shave $50 off, which definitely helps ease that pain.

But here’s the thing…

The reason I hold onto the [[ the-marriott-bonvoy-boundless-card.casual-card-name ]] is that it also comes with ANOTHER free night award – every year.

This one is only worth 35,000 points, but that’s still super easy to justify paying $95 for the card.

For example, I just told you that I will be traveling to Abidjan next month.

There are only a couple of chain hotels in the entire country, and they’re all annoyingly expensive…

But one of them happens to be this super sleek-looking Marriott property that costs $300+ per night, or 37,000 points.👇

This is the exact kind of situation where these Free Night Awards really come in handy.

Anyway, this new offer is fantastic… It’s hard to say who this offer is good for, because it can really be useful for anyone who wants to book a five-night trip, whether that’s in New York City or a random country in West Africa.

🏨 Marriott improves elite nights for budget brands

More good news from Marriott?? What is going on this week??

In a very un-Marriott move, Marriott has decided to make a positive change to one of their worst policies.

Let me back up…

Marriott has a handful of brands that earn just one elite night credit per two nights stayed.

Generally, these properties are VERY cheap, and you’ll find a lot of them in places like Japan:

Honestly, staying in a Marriott hotel, earning points, and getting elite nights in any way is still great when you’re paying $25 a night in a country like Japan…

But sadly, short stays (and odd-numbered night stays) resulted in nights going to waste.

For example, if you stayed three nights, you’d earn just one elite credit. If you stayed one night, zero credits.

But now, Marriott is offering partial elite night credits. So, if you spend a single night at one of these brands, you’ll get 0.5 elite night credits.

It’s great to save money on a stay and at least get something in return.

For example, one of the brands in question is Protea Hotels, which exists only in Africa.

I love Protea Hotels… sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t have a lot of major chain hotels, so Protea is a great place to use points when traveling in this region.

For example, I’ll be in Nigeria next month and want to stay on Victoria Island (the most posh neighborhood in Lagos).

There’s a Protea Hotel there that is not terribly expensive, which I’ve been eyeing. 👀

With this change, I’ll at least earn an elite night credit for my two-night stay there, on top of Marriott points and getting my elite benefits like free breakfast.

Anyway, I think this will mostly be relevant to travelers in Europe and Japan, where brands like Four Points Flex are super prominent.

That’s it for this Monday, kiddos! Stay tuned tomorrow for some completely different deals and updates from the points world.

Ciao,

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt