Plan for your CRUISE with points

Welcome back! How did you sleep? Enjoying your morning beverage of choice? 😌

Let’s ease into the weekend with some nice, feel-good travel updates from this past week.

✅ Get Southwest flights for just $49 (book by March 27th!).

✅ Is Emirates business class actually worth it? (Psst… it depends).

✅ New 25% transfer bonus from ThankYou points to Avianca Lifemiles (through April 12th).

🏆 Favorite pick of the week: Use points when planning for a cruise

I know there are a lottttt of you that love to cruise — I even did it once.

I was 18, had just rocked through my college finals while battling the flu and was ready to ball out on bottomless food and mocktails around the Caribbean.

Now the cruise itself is one thing — but, uh, you have to actually get to your cruise first, and that usually involves booking flights!

What if you used points to position yourself to the cruise port city? And WHAT IF you used Daily Drop Pro to find those cheap flights?? 😏

There’s really no better way to offset some of the cruise costs than by saving some coin on the flights to get there. 💪

Let’s take a look.

Maybe you live in Chicago (ORD) and you need to book a flight down to Fort Lauderdale (FLL).

Lucky for you, Daily Drop Pro just found this American Airlines flight that only costs 7,000 miles and $5.60 in taxes and fees. Boom. 👊

And like any good cruiser, you’ll wanna get there the night before, which means also needing to book a hotel.

Once again, Daily Drop Pro comes to the rescue with many hotel options that are bookable with points. 👇

In this example, finding multiple Hyatt properties in downtown Chicago for just 12,000 points a night is GREAT.

This is especially true when you can transfer UR points from our favorite card over to Hyatt in the blink of an eye.

So yeah. Using Daily Drop Pro to find flights in order to position yourself for a cruise is actually genius and a fun way to use the tool that I hadn’t thought of before!

🏃🏻‍♀️ Runner-Ups

🥇Let’s get spontaneous, shall we?

If you got anxiety just by seeing the word “spontaneous,” I feel you.

As someone who requires PLANNING, can’t handle SPONTANEOUS events, and needs to MENTALLY PREPARE for everything… booking a spontaneous trip can feel very *yikes* 🙃

No, really — hear me out because Singapore Airlines’ Spontaneous Escapes promo is back!

How it works: Each month, Singapore drops discounted award flights with last-minute availability for travel the following month. And it’s usually goooood stuff.

Here’s the (super chill) lowdown:

• You need to book by March 31st

• You can travel between April 1st-30th, 2025

• Only valid for saver-level award tickets (but that’s where the best value is anyway)

• Discounts apply to economy, premium economy and business class — depending on the route

For example, here’s a nice little sweet spot from several West Coast cities to Singapore (SIN) for 45,000 miles in premium economy — routes that can take 16 to 17 hours, might I add.

And these award routes aren’t exclusive just to/from Singapore. You can see all that’s offered here.

And because you can transfer your miles and points from all the major banks to Singapore’s KrisFlyer program, there’s no reason you can’t book one of these award flights… if you’re feeling spontaneous. 😏

If you don’t already have a card that earns transferrable points, check out our Best Travel Credit Cards page to get our most highly recommended ones!

🥈 Should you book one-way or round-trip flights for the best deals?

Well, well, well. It’s an age-old question. And it has an answer that everyone hates — it depends!

Are you using points to book? Do you want the most flexibility to change your plans if needed? Are you searching specifically for the cheapest cash price?

All these questions matter. 🤔

But we’ve seen an interesting trend pop up lately where round-trip, domestic flights within the U.S. are showing significantly discounted rates compared to two, one-way bookings.

Here’s an example from Nashville (BNA) to New York (JFK).

You’re telling me if I fly half the distance on a one-way route, I’ll pay $150 more than if I flew double the distance on a round-trip itinerary? Wut.

This tactic has been around for a while with international itineraries, but it’s definitely not been as common for domestic ones — so it’s good to know about.

But there are still many cases for when booking a one-way flight is more advantageous…

Curious? Mike does all the explaining in this newsletter. 😎

📣 Quick Callouts

• 🏃‍♂️ Mike on the move: How he saved thousands of dollars on his recent travels

• 🤓 Travel trivia: Which flight route holds the title for most turbulent in the world?

• 🙂 Decent: 25% transfer bonus from MR points to Marriott

That’s all for this week! I’m about to peel my cat off my lap and go for a nice bike ride… And I hope you also have a lovely first SPRING weekend 🌸🌱

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