Airline sacrifices goat to appease sky god 🐐

When you have airline miles, they are typically stuck there as...well.. airline miles. There's no way to transfer them, convert them, or do anything else other than use them.

Hotel points are a different story entirely.

Pretty much every major hotel loyalty program allows you to transfer your points to dozens of airline partners at varying ratios and increments. Here are a few examples:

• Marriott lets you convert points at a 3:1 ratio, but adds a BONUS of 15,000 points for every 60,000 points you convert. So, 60,000 Marriott points would equate to 25,000 miles with one of its 40 airline partners.
• Hilton lets you convert points at a 10:1 ratio to most airlines, with a few exceptions.
• IHG One Rewards will convert to airline miles at a 5:1 ratio (again, with some exceptions).

The reason you don't hear about this more often is that it's easy to accidentally suck the value out of your hard-earned points. For example, if you transfer 60,000 Marriott points (worth about $500) into 25,000 Delta Skymiles (worth around $300), you can see how you are losing value very quickly.

Now points and miles gurus might tell you that you should never do this because you're throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of value. They're not wrong…. But they're also sort of wrong.

I live in Canada, which isn’t blessed with the variety of co-branded credit card options that are offered south of the border. So, racking up hotel points and converting them to airline miles is a great way for Canadians (and the rest of the world) to get airline miles that are otherwise difficult to earn.

Also, hotel loyalty programs offer some ridiculous ways to multiply your points earnings. You'll remember that in a previous newsletter I covered how to earn 54x points per dollar at Hilton hotels using the Mike Dodge Super Duper Points Stacking Methodology (copyright pending).

Since you can transfer Hilton points to airlines at a 10:1 ratio, you could think of this as a method for earning 5.4 airline miles per dollar, which is EXTREMELY good. In fact, it's better than almost any other credit card or loyalty program's earning rate out there. It also has the added bonus of being extremely flexible, since Hilton has more transfer partners than some of the banks out there.

And who said you needed a credit card to earn transferable points and miles?

This is a great creative way to earn free flights on airlines around the world without needing to fly with that airline or open any credit card. And you'd be surprised how quickly you can rack up hotel points without spending very many nights at hotels.

For more information, check out these resources on the various airline partners for major hotel programs:

• Hilton
• Marriott
• IHG
• Radisson
• Wyndham
• Hyatt

That's right. From September through December, local and medium-distance trains (under 300km) will be free of charge in Spain. This applies to ANYONE from local commuters to tourists.

Sound too good to be true? Well, there is a catch…

You need to purchase a seasonal pass for either €10 or €20 and complete 16 trips within that timeframe. After doing so, your ticket will then be refunded to you.

This might sound like a lot, but if you're looking to travel long distances, you'll need to break up your journey into multiple rides anyway, so hitting 16 total in 4 months isn't too crazy.

The best part is that even if you don't complete 16 trips, you're still getting a ton of train travel for a maximum of 20 Euros total, which is also a drastic discount on the normal cost of these trips.

FREE travel? In THIS economy?

The Prime Minister announced this initiative in July to help reduce the impact of the cost of living crisis that many Spaniards are facing. Specifically, he said, "I know that your salary is getting less and less, that it is difficult to make ends meet, and that your shopping basket is becoming more and more expensive."

The free train tickets will be subsidized by a new "windfall tax" placed on massive energy companies that have profited from rising interest rates and energy costs.

You may agree or disagree with this kind of choice from a government, but my job is to give you the best travel hacking tips. So let's save the politics talk for the Thanksgiving dinner table 🦃.

You can’t make this stuff up, people…

This is actually a really old story, but I think it's worth sharing - I find it both alarming and quite entertaining.

Almost exactly 15 years ago in September of 2007, Nepal Airlines was experiencing some technical issues with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft.

So they did what any respectable airline would do when faced with this situation - they sacrificed two goats in front of the plane to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god.

Shortly after the ceremony, a senior official from the airline said “The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights.”

Let's just say I'm glad I wasn't one of the guinea pigs to fly on that plane afterward…

This was a long time ago and Nepal Airlines is actually a very safe airline. In fact, I'll be flying with them in just a couple of months on a trip to Kathmandu and am not the least bit worried about their record as an airline. If I see any goats in close proximity to my plane I might change my mind, though 😛

Well, that's gonna do it for today. Wow, that was a rollercoaster of a newsletter, eh?

Make sure to tune in tomorrow when we announce the winner of 85,000 Delta miles. It's going to be very, very exciting.

Did you know you could transfer hotel points to airline miles? Have you ever witnessed a goat sacrifice? Let me know (maybe just about the first question) by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.

Auf Wiedersehen,

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