✈️ Wanna come watch us talk about travel hacking later today?

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 12 seconds

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the champagne of newsletters. But more like the $5 bottle of champagne as opposed to the $600 one. After all, it is a free newsletter. 😉

But just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s not exciting… check it out:

• 🖥️ Travel Hacking 101 Webinar later TODAY!!

• 🏨 Last chance to save some cash on IHG stays

• 🙋‍♀️ Travel Trivia Tuesday

🖥️ Travel Hacking 101 Webinar - TODAY at 4 p.m. EST

Yep. Not a drill. Today is our big Travel Hacking 101 webinar!

Let’s do some quick math:

You + Me (hyped up on caffeine and ready to talk travel hacking) + Megan (human sparkler and Daily Drop Community Manager) + Kara and Nate (yes, the Kara and Nate) = super awesome travel hacking fun times.

And that’s the most math you’ll have to do in the whole webinar 😂

Come learn Travel Hacking 101 with Megan and then get some exclusive Q&A time with Kara, Nate, and ME!

It’s going to be VERY good (in my completely unbiased opinion), so don’t miss it.

Here are the details and where you can join:

4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EST —> right here in our private community

If you’ve been reading Daily Drop and thinking, “Can we rewind this story for a hot second? What’s a point? What’s a mile?! Where do I begin?!” then this is the place for you!

And if you’re a little more seasoned in travel hacking, why not come remember your humble beginnings with us and have fun hanging out with some fellow travelers?!

See you there! 😉

🏨 Last chance to take advantage of this IHG promo

I know a lot of you are sitting on some nice little piles of IHG points thanks to the current ridiculous credit card offer on the [[ ihg-rewards-premier-credit-card.name ]] that we all know and love.

But for those of you who aren’t able to or don’t want to get the card, there is still a great way to take advantage of the IHG One Rewards program to save some big cash on your next booking.

Until the end of the day today, you can buy IHG points with a 100% bonus.

Generally speaking, you shouldn’t buy points for no reason. Most of the time, the cost of buying points (even with a big bonus like this) outweighs the value of those points.

However, y’all know I like to game the system for outsize value with this stuff, so you can bet your buttocks that there are some ways to save hundreds of dollars with this promo.

For example, I was just looking at a property in Mexico City (my favorite place on planet earth and a magical city that I love dearly) for a stay I was thinking about booking this summer.

As you can see, a 5-night stay would run you almost 11,000 pesos, or about $580 USD. That’s not terrible for a 5-night stay in a great location, but we can do better…

You can also see that using points to book this property comes in at 13,200 points per night or 66,000 points for the stay.

Using this current promotion, you could simply buy 66,000 IHG points for just $330 USD and book the property with points.

So by taking advantage of this promotion, you’ll save $250 USD on a 5-night stay, no credit card or points stash required.

If you have the [[ ihg-rewards-premier-credit-card.casual-card-name ]] we talked about but have already run out of points, the deal gets even better…

That’s because one of the perks of this card is that you get every fourth night free using points.

Therefore, this 5-night stay would only cost 52,800 points (since one of those nights is now free), which you could buy for just $270 with this points promotion, less than HALF of the cash cost of the same room on the same dates. 🤯

The nice benefit here is that the card also gives you Platinum elite status, so this $270, 5-night stay would also have a late checkout, a room upgrade, etc.

FYI, there are other properties in Mexico City (and elsewhere in the world) that cost even fewer points and where you can really stack up some savings from this method.

If you do see a chance to buy cheap points for a stay, make sure you always compare the price of the points to the cash price to ensure you’re getting better value.

If you do, jump on it!

🙋‍♀️ Travel Trivia Tuesday

If you didn’t read today’s trivia question at the top of this email, go do that now before you stumble across the answer below.

Personally, I use thumbs up all the time.

When traveling abroad, a simple thumbs up is a great way to confirm all sorts of things.

Like which size bubble tea you want to order (XL, obvs), whether your taxi driver has indeed brought you to the right location, or when someone says something to you and you don’t understand, so you give a hail mary thumbs up in case it ends up making total sense.

But in the country of Iran, a thumbs up is bad news bears… It’s pretty much the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger…

If a stranger came up to you with a smile on their face and flipped you off, you’d be confused at best and upset at worst…

I’d very much like to see Iran one day - I’ll just have to go cold turkey on the thumbs-up a few weeks beforehand. 😉 

That’s all for today, folks! I can’t wait to see some of you in the webinar later today! Well, for me it’ll be 5 a.m. in Japan, so I’ll have a human-sized mug of coffee to get me through…

We’ve talked a lot about opportunities to save money by buying points, so I’m curious:

Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll see some of you later today and the rest of you bright and early tomorrow 😀 

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