2024 travel wrap-up

Good morning and HAPPY NEW YEAR from LaGuardia airport in the Big Apple, just a couple hours away from being back in Canada for the first time in over eight months.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already 2025… and while I suspect this year will hold many amazing travel deals and adventures, I want to kick off the year by recapping the previous one.

So, without further ado, here is the 2024 wrap-up!

For me, 2024 started off exactly the way it should - in a Turkish Airlines business-class seat over the ocean.

On New Year’s Day, I continued onward to Mongolia, which remains one of the best parts of my entire year.

I stayed in a yurt (which I booked with points) and loved every second of it.

From here, my year turned into one big Asia adventure with some pretty crazy stats.

For starters, I broke my previous single-year flight record with a total of 107 flights:

My 2024 map covered 37 countries, 68 airports, 48 airlines, and… unsurprisingly, DELAYS.

In total, I lost 33 hours to delays, with 60% of my flights arriving late and a whopping 68% of them departing late…

As you have all probably also experienced, the on-time records of airlines continue to trend downward year after year, which is… sad.

The worst delay was with Scoot, where my plane literally lost a piece of the engine housing during taxi, causing us to return to the gate.

After re-boarding, do you want to guess what happened?

Yep. The same thing. 😑

So we returned again, switched planes, and rolled down the runway while the flight attendants were running down the freaking aisle, not seated when the plane lifted off. Every second of that day was the least safe I’ve ever felt on a plane.

Needless to say… NEVER AGAIN.

Anyway, United accounted for hours of delays despite me only flying with them twice. Meanwhile, Garuda Indonesia didn’t even register on my list of most-delayed airlines despite flying them THIRTEEN TIMES this year.

In terms of other most-flown airlines, Cathay Pacific clocked in second place with ten flights, with Air Canada and Qatar not far behind.

Regarding flight time, I spent 394 hours on planes, or over 16 full days.

My longest flight was a 14-hour flight from Doha to Boston in a middle economy seat, while my shortest flight was on Somon Air, which lasted less than an hour.

And I’m thankful it was only an hour. Because there was, and this is not a joke, a live wasp on the plane the whole time.

Thankfully, my year was also filled with AMAZING flights.

In total, I flew in business class 29 times.

And although that’s not even close to the majority of my flights, it did count for the majority of time spent in the air.

My strategy this year was to prioritize long-haul flights and sweet spots for business class, and fly the vast majority of flights under six hours long in economy.

This also included some more creative tactics…

For example, one of the highlights of my year was going to my best friend’s wedding in Tanzania.

It is probably the single best day of the year and one of the best (and longest) days of my entire life.

From Tanzania, I booked an Aeroplan economy award from Dar Es Salaam to Jakarta via Addis Ababa and Bangkok, all on Ethiopian Airlines.

For 18 hours of flying to exactly where I needed to be, this was a nice deal…

…but I wasn’t stoked for 18 hours in economy.

Thankfully, Ethiopian allowed me to upgrade to business class for the entire itinerary for just $400.

Since I had booked with points, spending 50,000 points and less than $500 for 18 hours in business class was AMAZING.

To make things better, I was all alone in the business cabin. 😎

So the crew and I had some fun and planned a little surprise for my best friend and his new wife, both of whom were in the back of the plane in economy.

They made a makeshift cake, busted out all of the business-class champagne, and had a little party in the economy cabin to celebrate their new marriage.

Even the captain came out to congratulate my friend and his wife, which was one of the most special flight experiences I could ever ask for.

Ethiopian doesn’t have the flashiest hard product out there.

But it is, without a doubt, my favorite airline in the world for exactly this reason. It’s just special!

I also found some other amazing straight-up cash business-class flight deals.

A couple of weeks ago, I found a ticket from Nanjing to Chengdu in China Eastern’s business class for around $100… for a 3-hour flight!

I hadn’t been to Nanjing or Chengdu, but the deal told me where to go.

And guess what? I fell in love with both places!

Other highlights included flying in Qatar Airways’ Qsuites for the first time, which definitely lived up to the hype.

I booked this route for 100,000 Avios from Montreal to Doha to Bali, which felt like a steal for so much flying and all legs being in Qsuites.

There were well over a dozen other excellent business-class seats I enjoyed throughout the year, but flying wasn’t nearly as important to me as finding accommodations as a nomad.

Thankfully, hotel points were a game-changer for me.

This year, I racked up the following nights in the major hotel programs (along with a couple of weeks of stays in non-chain hotels):

• Hyatt: 122 nights

• Marriott: 116 nights

• IHG: 54 nights

• Hilton: 5 nights

Being based in Asia most of the year, I based my entire life around the following principles:

• Hyatt Category 1 hotels for 3,500 or 5,000 points per night

• 5-night Marriott stays (to get every 5th night free)

• 4-night IHG stays (to get every 4th night free with this card)

I know I tell you this all the time, but the hotel game is just different out here…

For example, I spent around 35 nights of the year in a single Hyatt hotel in the small city of Surakarta, Indonesia.

This Category 1 Hyatt hotel cost 3,500 points for many of my nights or even as low as $44 per night.

I got lounge access (with free dinner), free breakfast (where they memorized the food I like and would make a la carte meals for me), luxurious rooms, a world-class gym and spa, and all in a beautiful, peaceful, culturally interesting place.

This city was the closest thing I had to a home base this year, and part of my heart will always be there. ❤️

But the fact that I could live so comfortably for less money than my Toronto rent was insane.

Throw in the Hyatt promos, points, milestone rewards, etc., and I basically came out of stays like that with a return on spend equivalent to the spend itself.

It just goes to show you that there ARE still amazing deals - if you base your travels around where you can find deals like this, your points will simply take you much, much further than more traditional destinations.

And while I lived more comfortably in Indonesia than anywhere else in my life, 2024 wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows…

Lowlights of my year included having my appendix removed in rural Indonesia (thankfully, my credit card insurance paid for it), getting arrested and extorted by police in Kazakhstan (oops, did I forget to tell you about that one?), and having some tough, lonely, and stressful days on the road.

But between the dark days were also amazing days.

I fell in love with Indonesia and China this year. So much so that I’m actually getting my Indonesian residence permit this week, where I plan to set up roots for the foreseeable future.

But my love affair with Indonesia is a story for another time.

While reading this, you might be thinking, “How the hell did you do all of this? Do you still have any points left?”

And the answer is… well… No… I don’t really. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I burned the VAST majority of my points in 2024. Millions of them, in fact.

That’s why a few months ago, I went into what I call my “replenishing phase.” I hadn’t signed up for a new credit card for over a year before August of this year.

So when I saw offers like this card with offers of 75,000 Capital One miles and a $300 travel credit and this card with 90,000 UR Points, I jumped on them and had no issues getting instant approvals.

I view those 90,000 UR Points as essentially a month in hotels like this one that I just stayed in last week:

As you can see from my travels, I prioritize sweet spot awards, leverage cash bookings, and stay primarily in budget hotels (especially if they’re secretly luxury hotels 😉).

So, for me, signing up for a couple of credit cards gives me enough points to last a WHILE - and if you’re someone who wants to leverage a single card for multiple trips, I’d recommend you use the same strategies.

But it wasn’t quite enough… I needed another “silver bullet,” if you will. 🧐

Thankfully, SAS stepped in in my moment of need, offering a way to earn a million airline miles for relatively little effort.

While this was no easy task (the stress of the whole thing took a couple of years off of my life), I was thrilled to get to complete most of the challenge with McKay, my fellow Daily Drop coworker. 👇

We had a lot of fun and learned a LOT.

And for those of you who had fears about whether or not SAS would honor this challenge, well… I’ll show you the email I got from them after finishing the final airline:

There’s a LOT more I want to tell you about related to the SAS challenge, but more on that tomorrow. 😉

Anyway, in addition to these high-profile challenges, 2024 saw some pretty insane travel hacks…

For starters, there were at least five FANTASTIC status matches (this one and this one being the best), which I took advantage of to enjoy world-class service and first-class lounges around the world.

We also saw more transfer bonuses than we’ve ever seen (some of which are still going on, by the way).

Aside from Bilt’s multiple ridiculous Rent Day bonuses (remember that 150% bonus to Aeroplan?), we saw multiple 40% transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic, resulting in flights to Europe for 4,000 points.

We also saw numerous all-time high credit card offers, including a new emerging trend of offering both cash credits and points… which I’m loving.

And while we saw Southwest return with their Companion Pass credit card offer, they also gave us numerous other non-credit card ways to earn Companion Pass this year.

Maybe coolest of all, we dropped our groundbreaking tool, Daily Drop Pro, which makes flight and hotel award searches easier than ever.

And I know it sounds like a shameless plug, but it’s true - being able to search through thousands of flights and hotels with a single click takes out the majority of the headaches of playing this points and miles game, and I’m SUPER proud to be associated with the team that pulled it all off.

Honestly, this year was packed with amazing travel deals like booking hotels for under 1,000 points per night, flying in Qsuites for 54k points, leveraging United’s secret sweet spot, and many, MANY more.

But I’ve droned on for far too long.

So here’s the deal:

I’m out here doing a bunch of crazy sh*t and figuring out a lot of these awesome travel tricks so I can share them with you every day in this fun newsletter.

I hope you learned a lot from reading Daily Drop in 2024, and I hope that 2025 will be another great year for travel.

So whatever your plans may be for the coming year, I’ll be right by your side to bring you all of the tips, tricks, and deals you need to know about to maximize your travels.

Love you ❤️

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