I'm giving away more Hyatt stuff

Good morning from Suzhou, China, and welcome back to Daily Drop, the most generous travel newsletter on the planet, as you’ll soon see.

Here’s what I’ve got:

• 💳 70% transfer bonus to IHG

• 🏨 I’m giving away 11 Hyatt awards

• ✈️ Earn up to 25x Southwest points per dollar for charity

💳 70% transfer bonus to IHG

We’ve been getting stoked about all these 20%, 30%, and even 40% transfer bonuses lately.

But those transfer bonuses are PATHETIC compared to this one… well, sort of.

Right now, you can transfer UR Points to IHG with a whopping 70% bonus:

This deal is good until January 15th, which gives you a nice long time to think about it and plan for some trips in 2025.

While this might sound like a great deal on the surface… it totally is. But not always. But sometimes yes.

Let me explain:

Since IHG points aren’t worth as much as many other points out there, a 70% bonus isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds.

But for the right redemption, it could still offer you outsize value for your hard-earned UR Points.

For example, this hotel in New York City costs 20,000 points per night.

With the 70% transfer bonus, you’d only need to shell out 12,000 UR Points per night, which is pretty darn good for New York City.

If you’re gearing up for a trip to Japan (which, let’s be honest, you are), you could book this hotel in Kanazawa for just 7,750 IHG Points per night (when using this card’s fourth-night free perk).

With this bonus, your four-night stay in Japan would only cost you 18,000 UR Points, or just 4,500 points per night, which is FANTASTIC.

As always, you shouldn’t speculatively transfer UR Points to IHG without a specific stay in mind that will offer good value for your points.

If you need to rack up some UR Points, you could open a card like this one, put all your holiday spending on it, and potentially have your welcome offer points before this deal ends on January 15th… though, that would be cutting it a bit close.

🏨 I’m giving away 11 Hyatt awards

Ho, ho, ho. It’s Christmas time, and I’m feeling saucy.

Since you all made it onto my nice list this year, I’m giving some of you a special gift… again.

But let’s back up for a sec.

Earlier today, I was hanging out and combing through Hyatt’s website (like normal people do) and saw that they shook up their list of brands.

As you can see below, they’ve re-categorized all of their brands and even added some new ones.

This is great news for Hyatt’s Brand Explorer promotion, which offers a Category 1-4 Free Night Certificate for every five brands you stay at.

One of the brands, Me and All Hotels, is a German brand that’s been with Hyatt for a while now but was previously lumped in with their JDV brand.

The fact that they separated the two is great news!

Earlier this year, Hyatt acquired Standard Hotels - so it’s good to see that they plan on adding a couple of them as full-fledged Hyatt brands (though these ones haven’t been reflected in the Brand Explorer page yet).

Anyway, to celebrate, I want to give away all of my Hyatt awards… again.

Well, not all of them… but a bunch of them, including all of my new Guest of Honor awards and all of my expiring Club Access Awards and Suite Upgrade Awards:

And don’t worry; there won’t be a crazy confusing scavenger hunt this time… though that was fun…

This time, here’s what you need to win:

• You MUST have a Hyatt stay booked THIS month

• You must write me a beautiful poem

When you click on the poll below, you’ll be allowed to leave extra comments. In those comments, you must craft a poem that is so beautiful it would make Robert Frost weep.

It can be about anything you want, but I’m a fan of romantic poetry about nature.

Again, you must have a Hyatt stay booked this month to be eligible - and I will ask for proof of this after I select the winners… 🧐

Here ya go:

I know a lot of you write in to ask about these giveaways when I announce them, so here’s what you need to know:

If you are selected as a winner, you will hear directly from me by email within two days of this email being published.

Now, GIMME THOSE POEMS.

✈️ Earn up to 25x Southwest points per dollar for charity

We usually see an increase in promoting charities and donating this time of year, and many times, it involves you donating your points for a good cause.

However, Southwest is offering a couple of ways to EARN a bunch of Rapid Rewards points in return for a cash donation!

The first option is Southwest’s own Points With a Purpose campaign.

You’ll receive 10x Southwest points per dollar donated through December 16, 2024, with a minimum of $25 required, and a maximum of 10,000 points able to be earned.

These are the charities you can donate to through Points With a Purpose:

• Make-A-Wish

• Rescue America

• Team Rubicon

Southwest has also teamed up with the charity, Give Big Hawai’i, where you can earn a WHOPPING 25x points per dollar on your cash donations (minimum of $25 and maximum of $400) through December 31, 2024.

Your donations with this one will go to support more than 100 organizations in Hawai’i ❤️

You can do the math here and see that if you donated the maximum amount of $400, you could earn another 10,000 Southwest points ($400 × 25).

If you took advantage of and maxed out both donation opportunities, you could be walking away with a stash of 20,000 Southwest points!

Obviously, these points aren’t free… you’re donating to a cause, after all.

But if you set aside funds for charity each year, or are just feeling in the giving spirit, this is an excellent way to get a return on your generous contributions.

That’s all for today, friends! I’ll be honest… I’m freaking exhausted from flying every day for this SAS challenge, so I’m gonna go get some shut-eye.

But don’t worry, we’ll be back first thing tomorrow to finish off the week.

Until next time ❤️

31.2983° N, 120.5832° E