✈️ The US Department of Transportation has announced an investigation into unfair practices by airline frequent flier programs, including things like devaluations. Read more about it here.
Good morning and happy Monday from Indonesia, my home away from home… which is basically my home now.
Last week was packed with travel goodies, and this week should be no different:
💳 Earn 90k Chase points with this $0 card
Y’all…
Normally, a DOPE welcome offer like this would be a separate Red Alert email…
But I don’t know what the heck is going on this year—the elevated card offers we’ve seen so far have been out of this world. 👽
And I’m a good boi and don’t want to blow up your inboxes too much, so here we are.
Just when I was starting to think the gravy train was coming to a halt, another ridiculously high (and valuable) welcome offer dropped.
You ready?
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is currently offering $900 bonus cash back (that’s 90,000 bonus points!) after you spend $6,000 in the first three months of opening the card.
And the best part?
There’s no annual fee. 😎
Personally, I think this card could be worth holding long-term due to its solid 1.5% unlimited cash back earned per dollar on all purchases… but before we get there, I’ve got some explaining to do.
If you click this link to learn more about the card, you’ll see that the welcome offer is described as $900 cash back.
That’s not a mistake. This is a cash-back card.
BUT…
If you hold a card that earns Chase points, such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, that cash back can be converted into Chase points.
So, that $900 in cash back can be easily converted into transferrable points worth significantly more if you play your “cards” right. 😉
For example, you can transfer Chase points to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio.
You could transfer 72,000 of those points and book four nights at this hotel in Scotland.
With a total cash cost of $510 per night, you’ve already gotten over $2,000 in value from the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card… and you still have almost 20,000 points left…
…AND IT HAS NO FREAKING ANNUAL FEE.
Want to be more conservative with those points?
No worries. I got u, boo.
After meeting the minimum spend for the card, and therefore earning an additional 9,000 points ($6,000 × 1.5 points per dollar), you’d have a total of 99,000 Chase points from the welcome offer.
You could book as many as 28 nights at a Hyatt hotel like this one in Germany:
Twenty-eight nights by earning the welcome offer on a card with no annual fee… I never thought I’d see the day. 🥲
FYI… If you did actually book 28 nights at hotels like that one, you’d get $4,480 in value from your $0 annual fee credit card.
Chase also has a ton of other useful transfer partners like Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue, among many others.
Both of those programs allow you to fly to Europe for as few as 10,000 or 15,000 points, respectively.
That’s a lot of flights to Europe, folks… 👨🎨
So listen… If you already have a card that earns Chase points, the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is a perfect supplemental companion card.
It effectively will allow you to earn 1.5 Chase points per dollar on anything, which is not something any other Chase card can do.
Between that, the welcome offer, and the lack of an annual fee… it’s hard to resist.
So click this glorious section of highlighted text to learn more or apply!
🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits
🧖♂️ Speaking of Priority Pass spas… Beginning September 16th, those of you with credit cards offering Priority Pass will have access to XpresSpa, which has locations in 17 airports around the U.S.
✈️ Virgin Atlantic is getting crazy with its route network... So far, they’ve already announced new routes in 2025, including Toronto, Riyadh, and even Accra, Ghana.
🏨 Quick Promo: Marriott Homes and Villas is offering double elite night credits on stays booked by September 20th and completed by the end of this year. If you can find a cheap place to stay, it could be an easy way to boost yourself closer to elite status!
🏃🏼♂️ Mike on the Move: My favorite airline to book with points
As I mentioned in the intro, I’m back in Indonesia… but that wasn’t the plan until about a day before I left to come here.
I got sick and tired of being alone on the road in so many different (and sometimes stressful) countries, so I canned the rest of my trip to come back to a familiar place to… just chill.
So, within one day of leaving Skopje, Macedonia, I canceled two weeks of travel and booked a new itinerary home to Jakarta.
Being so last minute, I didn’t have many options…
But I did find this itinerary from Skopje to Singapore on Turkish Airlines and Gulf Air for just 80,000 Aeroplan points in business class. 😎
As soon as I saw this, I booked it without thinking twice…
The first leg took me to Istanbul, a short one-hour flight with an overnight layover in Istanbul.
I ended up booking this airport hotel through the Capital One travel portal for about a hundred bucks (the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card strikes again):
It was cheap for a last-minute booking, five minutes from the airport, and ended up being surprisingly comfortable.
But here’s where things get VERY good…
The next two legs of the itinerary were in Gulf Air business class.
If you’ve never flown Gulf Air before, you might not realize that it’s one of the best airlines in the world and might just be my favorite airline to book with points.
Here’s why:
First, they have lie-flat seats on almost all of their planes, even the smaller ones.
Their Dreamliners, however, are outfitted with amazing business-class Apex Suites, which feel way more private than most business-class products.
Flying this for eight hours from Bahrain to Singapore was definitely a special treat. 👇
But even their smaller A320 and A321 planes mostly have lie-flat seats, which I got to fly for four hours from Istanbul to Bahrain.
This means that you don’t need to play games when booking Gulf Air and go hunting for specific routes, planes, seat types, etc. because they’re all equally high quality.
I also LOVE Bahrain airport.
It’s got the feel of your classic Middle Eastern hub like Doha, Dubai, or Muscat… but better.
The airport is huge and modern but almost always empty. Bahrain, being such a small country, is also a great long layover airport.
In about three or four hours, you can see most of the famous sights in Bahrain, including museums, the Al Fateh Grand Mosque, and even ancient ruins.
Plus, the Gulf Air business lounge is world-class but without any of the crowds of other big-name airline lounges.
Since Gulf Air partners with Aeroplan but isn’t part of any alliance, there is frequent award availability, whether booking last minute, far in advance, or anywhere in between.
If you sign up for the card I told you about earlier, you’d be able to book ANY of Gulf Air’s routes by transferring those points to Aeroplan.
So if you are traveling to the Middle East or connecting from various regions of the world, I’d recommend going out of your way to fly Gulf Air.
It’s an excellent alternative to the big-name carriers, easy to find availability with, and has hard and soft products that rival Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar.
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Whew, that was a hefty newsletter for a Monday, eh?
I won’t keep you any longer, but I hope you got some value from my recent travels and consider applying for this truly ridiculous card.
See you next time. ❤️
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