March Madness (Bilt Edition)

Good morning, and welcome back to Daily Drop, the most essential part of any balanced travel-hacking breakfast… that and cold airport lounge pizza.

Here’s what I’ve cooked up for you today:

• 💳 Bilt’s March Madness promo

• 🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• ✈️ Spend $500, get $100 back on Alaska Airlines

💳 Bilt’s March Madness promo

Bilt is back with another Rent Day for March, and they’re definitely keeping us on our toes with this one…

You see, there’s this thing called March Madness. It happens every year in March and involves a sport of some kind. I won’t get into the details of it because, quite frankly, I have no idea what it is.

But Bilt has modeled this month’s Rent Day after it and will be hosting a 16-bracket tournament for the next couple of days.

Basically, here’s the deal:

Until the end of February, Bilt members can vote on the 16 options shown above, and the winner will be the official Rent Day promotion for March 1st.

I won’t list out all of the options, but I will tell you which ones I think are the best…

• 15x points on car rentals through the Bilt portal

• 15x points on hotels in the Bilt portal

• 15x points on Bilt Dining restaurants

• 15x points on Lyft

• 1,000 Bilt points when you link a card in the Bilt app (up to 2,000 points)

• 5x points at grocery stores (if you have the Bilt Mastercard®)

As you can see, my favorite options involve earning a TON of Bilt points… That’s because Bilt has one of the best rosters of transfer partners out there.

Let’s take the example of 15x at hotels in the Bilt portal…

I’m heading to London in a couple of days and need to book a hotel for a couple of nights.

I found tons of great deals right in the Bilt portal, like this hotel that costs $263 for two nights, which is not bad at ALL for London.

If I earned 15x on this purchase, I’d end up with a total of 3,945 Bilt points… 

I could then transfer those points to Hyatt and book another free hotel night like this one, which only costs 3,500 points per night.

If you have a more expensive hotel stay planned, you can do the math for yourself to see how many points you’d earn…

Keep in mind that you don’t even need to have the Bilt card to participate since anybody can make a free Bilt account and earn points through the portal.

So here’s the bottom line:

There could be some great opportunities to rack up some easy Bilt points on Friday, so make sure you vote for your choice by the end of the day on Thursday.

🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• 📸 Staples is giving away free passport photos (tomorrow only)

• 🍺 Alaska Airlines is now brewing their own beer

• ✈️ United becomes the first U.S. airline to resume flights to Tel Aviv

✈️ Spend $500, get $100 back on Alaska Airlines

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve featured an offer for cardholders of this card family.

These deals can be found in your account and are linked to your cards that allow you to get special discounts, receive bonus statement credits, or earn additional MR points.

I sometimes forget that they exist, but every now and then, an offer comes along that is worth sharing 👇

I’m currently seeing this offer on my account for this card, but I know others have also seen it come through on its golden counterpart.

Here’s the breakdown:

• You’ll get a $100 statement credit after spending $500 or more with Alaska Airlines

• The Alaska-operated flight must be booked through the eligible card’s travel portal (but don’t worry, you can still add your frequent flyer number to earn Alaska miles)

• The offer expires May 26th, 2024, so make sure you book tickets before that date

• You can meet this $500 with more than one purchase

• Eligible spends for this offer not only include Alaska airfare, but also fare upgrades, seat selection, and baggage fees

This isn’t a groundbreaking deal, but I still think it’s pretty good! It’s an easy way to save a chunk of change for booking a flight you were already going to, or perhaps one you’re now more motivated to book!

So I’d say this offer is definitely worth checking your account for 😎

Do you ever scroll through your social media and see all those people traveling the world and staying in fancy hotels and think to yourself, “Wow, how on earth can they afford all of that?”

Well, chances are… they probably can’t afford it. In fact, many people taking these fancy, luxurious trips don’t pay anything for them.

And in this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, Brendan is going to take YOU on an adventure through Europe and show you how he booked a $21,000 luxury vacation using miles and points, and paying next to nothing out of pocket. 👇

That’s all for today, friends! I don’t know about you, but I LOVE it when programs gamify miles and points the way Bilt is doing this month.

On that note, tell me:

See you tomorrow ❤️

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