The results are in... y'all travel a LOT

Good morning from my comfy Thai Airways business-class seat on their sexy Airbus A350!

But before I down the rest of my free business-class champagne, let’s talk about travel hacking, shall we?

• 🌎 Daily Drop Annual Survey Results

• 🏨 IHG discount on award stays

• ✈️ Last chance to score a discounted mystery trip from United

🌎 Daily Drop Annual Survey Results

If you remember, we sent out a survey last week. It was an amazing survey. Critics raved about it for days on end.

But now we have the results of said survey, and I want to share some of them with you!

One of the first things that stuck out to me was this:

I always tell people about how airport lounges were what first got me excited about travel hacking.

So I was quite surprised to see that about 40% of you didn’t visit a single airport lounge this past year.

However, I went and looked at last year’s survey and saw that when we asked the same question a year ago, 60% of you hadn’t visited a lounge…

So at least you’re learning something from reading Daily Drop. 😜

Here’s another fun one (the graph here is a little confusing since the answer was multiple choice, but you get the idea):

This is fantastic to see because this means that well over half of you flew in a premium cabin this past year.

In my opinion, flying premium seats is one of the best ways to use miles and points, because it represents a style of travel that is otherwise inaccessible for most of us.

Also… I was really surprised to see that over 10% of you flew first class! Hell yeah!

Want to hear a fun fact…?

I didn’t even fly first class in 2023… In fact… I’ve NEVER flown first-class. 😮 

And here’s one last one to discuss before we move on:

This is just awesome to see.

This graph means that about one-third of you flew more than 10 times this past year.

I know I’m a monster for flying over 100 times a year, but ten flights a year is still a lot for the average person - and definitely a number of flights that make travel hacking worthwhile.

I truly hope that Daily Drop is helping you to travel hack your way through most of these flights, hotels, and airport lounges.

But there are WAY more fun pieces of data that we simply don’t have time to discuss here.

So if you want to dive into this more, check out our website for the full survey results: 👇

🏨 IHG discount on award stays

Two IHG sections in one week? It is truly a crazy time to be alive.

IHG has a special deal for certain members that is actually pretty sweet. Right now, you can get a 15% discount on award stays of up to three nights.

Here’s the deal:

• You must book by this Sunday (January 14th)

• Travel must take place before February 22nd

• The discounted rate will be reflected in the search (if you’re eligible)

• This only applies to award bookings, not cash bookings.

There is a catch to this, however… it is only available to members who hold the hotel brand’s (awesome) credit card.

If you do hold this card, you probably already know that one of the best perks is getting every fourth night free when booking with points.

The fact that you can now book a three-night stay and still get some points shaved off makes holding this card even more valuable.

Personally, I’ll be staying at an IHG hotel in Bali in a couple of weeks. As fate would have it, I have a 3-night stay booked, which cost me 27,000 points per night.

But with this current award sale, I can simply cancel my current booking and rebook the exact same property on the same nights for 23,000 points per night, saving me around 12,000 points on my stay.

Is this deal groundbreaking? No. Is it worth bending over backward for? LOLZ no. Is it just another awesome reason to hold one of the best co-branded credit cards? Yep. For sure.

But make sure you book before Sunday if you want to take advantage of this!

✈️ Last chance to score a discounted mystery trip from United

All week long, United has been unveiling one surprise international flight deal each day… something they’ve coined as “Adventure Week.”

This is exclusively for MileagePlus members and includes putting an international destination on sale (in miles) for just… 24 hours.

These will be round-trip tickets from the continental U.S., in economy, for just 50,000 miles (plus taxes and fees).

Is 25,000 miles one-way to Europe the cheapest award fare we’ve ever seen?

Nope.

But there are certainly FAR more redemptions that are much higher than that…

And any opportunity to save my precious miles and points is a good opportunity in my book 😎

Oh yeah, you’ll need to travel between now and March 20th, 2024 to score this discounted fare.

For example, the destinations revealed so far this week have been:

• Monday: London

• Tuesday: Paris

• Wednesday: Amsterdam

• Thursday (yesterday): Frankfurt

• Friday (today): ???

At the time of writing, I’m able to search for Frankfurt’s deal while it’s still active. Here’s an example of the outbound flight showing 25k miles from Seattle:

And an example for flying out of Chicago:

There are tons of itineraries from other departing cities as well.

And of course, the return flight is also marketed at 25k miles as well, but you must book this as a round-trip ticket to get the deal.

So who knows, today’s location might be the perfect destination for your Spring Break trip!

Just remember, you have 24 hours to snag it. 💪

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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 gonna finish off the week, folks!

Thanks again for participating in our annual survey - it’s always fun to see how you all like to travel, especially when we see that data change over the years.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you bright and early on Monday ❤️

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