Fly to the Caribbean for 5k miles

Good morning, and welcome back to Daily Drop! We’ve got a nice, well-rounded lineup of travel stuff for you today, so I won’t waste any more of your time.

Here’s what’s up:

• 😮 100% transfer bonus to Avios

• 🏨 New IHG Promo

• ✈️ Fly to the Dominican Republic for 5k miles

😮 100% transfer bonus to Avios

I’m very excited about this one, folks…

As you know, Bilt has a “Rent Day” on the first day of every month, where Bilt Rewards members get special deals.

Lately, those deals have been… meh.

But on April 1st, Bilt is back with another one of its classic “too good to be true” transfer bonuses.

Specifically, you can get up to a 100% transfer bonus to various Avios programs (British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus).

As with all of Bill’s transfer bonuses, any Bilt member (even those without the Bilt Mastercard®) is eligible to partake.

But the higher status you have with Bilt, the better the transfer bonus. Here is how that works:

As you can see, even members with no Bilt status (Blue members) can still get a 50% bonus, which is way better than any other publicly available transfer bonus we’ve seen to Avios.

To be clear, these transfer ratios are only good on April 1st from 12:00 am EST to 11:59 pm PST, so set your reminders now, folks.

So, how good is this?

Well… it’s amazing. On the more luxurious end of this offer, you could book a 14-hour flight in Qsuites from Montreal (YUL) to Doha (DOH) for just 70,000 Avios. 👇

If you have Bilt Platinum status, you’d only need to transfer 35,000 Bilt points to book this flight.

But even Bilt Blue members could book the same thing for 47,000 Bilt points, which is still insane for one of the best seats in the sky:

But you don’t need to travel all the way to Qatar to get good value from this.

For example, you could also book this business-class flight from New York (JFK) to Madrid (MAD) for just 34,000 Iberia Avios.

With this bonus, anyone with a free Bilt account could book this business-class flight for 23,000 Bilt points, and top-tier elites could do it for just 17,000 Bilt points…

So here’s the bottom line:

This is a perfect example of why it’s still worthwhile to rack up Bilt points.

You might go a few months without a good way to use your points. But when these opportunities do come around, you’ll want a fat stack of them.

🏨 New IHG Promo

IHG has been on fire this year with the promos. So far this year, they’ve already launched two global offers:

• Earn 2x points on all stays

• Earn double elite nights

I’ve gotten a ton of value out of both of them through about 12 nights I’ve spent at IHG properties already this year.

So you can imagine my excitement when I got an email from them today with ANOTHER promotion. 👇

This time around, they’re offering 3,000 bonus points for every two nights stayed.

Here are the deets:

• Only paid nights count

• Valid for stays between April 1st and May 15th

• You must register for the offer

• You can earn a maximum of 9,000 points

• This is a targeted offer

That last point is the real bummer here. But so far, I’m hearing that a LOT of people have been targeted. So click this link and see if you’re able to register.

Now, let’s be clear - 9,000 points isn’t anything to write home about, and certainly not something to rearrange all of your plans around.

But if you leverage some cheap properties and stack this with the offer to earn double elite nights, it can really make things worthwhile.

For example, I have a few nights booked in Jakarta at one of my favorite Holiday Inns in the world, which only costs about $40 a night most days.

Six nights here would cost me $240 and earn me the following:

• 9,000 bonus points from this promo

• 2,400 points for being an IHG member

• 2,400 points for paying with the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card

• 2,400 points for being Diamond Elite

• 12 elite nights from the other promo

Earning 16,200 points and 12 elite nights from a $240 stay is fantastic, especially because it will unlock a couple more of IHG’s milestone rewards… which give me even more points.

So here’s the bottom line:

IHG definitely leads the pack in terms of promotions.

Because they have so many budget-friendly brands, it’s the perfect program to get a lot of bang for your buck when leveraging their promos.

✈️ Fly to the Dominican Republic for 5k miles

I love a good award deal… Especially one that barely requires any points to take advantage of.

Right now, you can get exactly this type of deal with your American Airlines miles by flying to one specific destination: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

The best part?

This applies to a ton of U.S. cities and will cost you as few as 5,000 American Airlines miles:

As of the time of writing, there are quite a few dates (especially in May) with availability.

And even if you can’t find flights for 5,000 miles, there are a bunch for 5,500, 6,000, or 6,500 miles as well.

This nonstop flight from Philadelphia (PHL) to Punta Cana (PUJ) will run you 6,500 miles, or just 5,000 miles with a connection.

Just so you know how good of a deal this is, the same nonstop flight on the same day is pricing out at $416…

So, in this case, you’re getting 5.5 cents per point in value for an economy-class flight on AA.

Even other cities like Chicago (ORD) and Dallas (DFW) have flights to Punta Cana for the same price, which are also great deals.

So here’s the bottom line:

AA miles are hard to come by, but that’s the beauty of this sale - even a few thousand miles you’ve racked up over the years can get you on an otherwise expensive flight to the Caribbean.

This sale is only valid until March 30th and applies to flights between May 1st and July 31st, 2025.

That’s all for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this longer but jam-packed newsletter.

In fact, if you did enjoy it, tell me which part you enjoyed the most:

See you tomorrow, you beautiful people. ❤️

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