New 80% transfer bonus

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop. A lot of stuff has happened in the travel world since the last time I emailed you, so let’s get straight to it:

• ✈️ A new way to use JetBlue points

• 🏨 80% transfer bonus to IHG

• 💳 Earn an easy 10,000 Delta SkyMiles

✈️ A new way to use JetBlue points

JetBlue has been on the up and up recently. A couple of months ago, I told you about how you can redeem JetBlue points on TAP Air Portugal.

And as of today, you can also now redeem them for flights on Icelandair, which is pretty sweet.

Icelandair has a pretty robust route network in North America and Europe. So whether you want to go to Iceland itself or just connect onward to Europe, it’s the perfect airline for either one.

As far as how good of value it is when redeeming JetBlue points with Icelandair, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

For example, a flight from Boston (BOS) to Reykjavik (KEF) will run you just 17,000 JetBlue points, which isn’t bad at all.

But if you live on the West Coast, things aren’t as pretty.

For example, a flight from Seattle (SEA) to Reykjavik will cost you 32,000 JetBlue points in economy, which is quite steep.

Alaska Airlines also partners with Icelandair, and they only charge 17,500 miles for the same exact flight:

Anyway, I also mentioned that you can connect through Iceland to Europe. And unfortunately, this also isn’t a great value…

Depending on the route and the time of year you’re flying, flights could be insanely expensive…

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

If you are a big JetBlue fan and have a stash of points, you now have yet another way to put them to use, sometimes for great value.

However, Alaska is probably the better option for longer Icelandair flights!

🏨 80% transfer bonus to IHG

It’s not often we see transfer bonuses go as high as 80%…

So when you read this headline, you might’ve wanted to go run to your account and transfer all of your points over to IHG.

But don’t do that. At least not yet, please.

Until April 30th, you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to IHG with an 80% bonus.

Don’t forget that, generally speaking, hotel points are worth significantly less than airline miles, so this probably isn’t as crazy of a deal as it looks at first glance…

But make no mistake — there are ways to get amazing value from this. And I’ll show you how.

For example, I have a stay coming up in Beirut, Lebanon, in a few weeks, where I’m staying at the Crowne Plaza, an IHG hotel. 👇

It costs just 12,500 IHG points per night. So, with this transfer bonus, that’s under 7,000 Ultimate Rewards points per night, which feels like a good deal to me.

In a couple of months, I’ll also be in Auckland, New Zealand, for a few nights, where I’ll be staying at the Voco, right in the middle of the city center.

At less than 15,000 IHG points per night, I could book a four-night stay here by transferring 32,000 Ultimate Rewards points with this bonus.

I’d say that’s pretty solid for an otherwise super expensive city.

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

IHG points aren’t as valuable as many other points… but if you’re traveling to a place with some cheaper IHG redemptions, I think this is a perfectly reasonable way to spend some Ultimate Rewards points!

💳 Earn an easy 10,000 Delta SkyMiles

Merchant offers are one of the best ways to get continued value from your credit cards with hefty annual fees.

I personally use them all the time, mostly for travel-related purchases. And right now, there’s a really solid one offered by American Express to earn up to 10,000 bonus Delta SkyMiles.

Here’s how it works:

If you have one of the airline’s co-branded cards (I personally have the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card), check your offers in your account.

If you see it, register for it… now.

Once registered, you can earn 5x bonus miles per dollar spent on Delta gift cards, up to 10,000 bonus miles.

Here’s why this is solid (for Delta flyers):

Delta gift cards never expire. So if you regularly spend money on Delta, you could just pre-pay for your next $2,000 worth of flights and rack up some tasty bonus miles.

If you recently signed up for a Delta card, this is also a great way to reach the minimum spending requirement and still have $2,000 of Delta flights to use anytime.

Delta miles aren’t crazy valuable, but you could still use those 10,000 miles to book some domestic flights or even this flight from Chicago (ORD) to Mexico City (MEX).

Once you get to Mexico, you could even bring me some chicken noodle soup and give me a hug to help me recover from this nasty illness.

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

This is an easy win for those who have Delta’s credit cards and those who plan to already spend some money on Delta.

Make sure you register for the offer and follow the instructions in your account to be eligible for the bonus miles.

That’s all for today, friends! I hope you enjoyed this array of new travel deals, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for even more!

Ciao,

19.4326° N, 99.1332° W