Playing with cash and points

Good morning and happy Friday, y’all. 🌞

I’ve got some fun content to finish out the week with, so before you ride off into the weekend sunset, check it out:

• 💸 Playing with “cash and points”

• ✈️ Buy Avios with a 25% bonus

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

💸 Playing with “cash and points”

There are some questions in life that keep us up at night…

“To be, or not to be?”

“Vanilla or chocolate?”

“Points or cash?”

That last one is maybe the most relevant to this newsletter, so let’s dive a little deeper into it, shall we?

Many programs (both airlines and hotels) allow you the chance to use both points AND cash when making a booking.

I use this option all the time - it’s a great way to save money on travel while also using my available cash budget, while also conserving my points for the future.

But oftentimes, this works out to be a bad deal. Sometimes, a VERY bad deal.

For example, when I was in Chongqing, China, last week, I looked at this Hyatt hotel, which costs 9,500 points or $192 per night:

If you want to book the cash and points rate for this hotel, you’ll see that the way it’s broken down is not great.

While the points price is cut in half, the cash price is 72% of the full cash rate.

In other words, your value per point goes down when booking this rate.

But sometimes, there are ways to get creative and work around this - and I’ll give you an example from my own upcoming travels.

Next month, I’ll be in Baku, Azerbaijan, which is home to a Hyatt Category 1 property:

If we look at the cash and points rates, they are divided similarly to the previous example.

For example, let’s say we want to book a 4-night stay and use some cash and some points.

If we book the “cash and points” rate for all four nights, we’ll pay 10,000 points and $353 in cash.

Instead, however, we can spend the same exact number of points while saving some money.

If we simply choose to pay two nights in all cash and two nights in all points, we’ll end up paying the same 10,000 points but only $288 in cash.

This is a fairly cheap hotel, so the savings aren’t crazy, but it’s also a quick fix for saving $65.

With a more expensive property, this could obviously be much more meaningful.

But this is based on the principle that the default “cash and points” rate isn’t favorable.

Sometimes, however, it totally is. 😏

For example, a few weeks ago, I stayed at this Marriott hotel in Jakarta. Take a look at the cost below for a one-night stay. 👇

For one night, you’ll shell out 20,000 Marriott Bonvoy points or $120 in cash.

But if we move through the booking process to the “points and cash” rate, we’ll see the following:

The points price drops by 50%, but the cash rate actually drops by a whopping 70% - basically the exact opposite of the Hyatt example from earlier.

If we wanted to book a 4-night stay here, it would be more optimal to book the cash and points rate for all nights rather than to book half with just cash and half with just points.

So here’s the bottom line:

Play around with cash and points.

You can get creative with how you build a hotel stay, which can sometimes save you a lot of money, especially if you’re aware of these options with many stays over time.

✈️ Buy Avios with a 25% bonus

Speaking of creative ways to play the points game…

Sometimes, buying points can be beneficial. If you have been reading Daily Drop for a while now, you’ve probably seen many examples of how I strategically buy points.

Until August 5th, you can buy Iberia Avios with a 25% bonus, which could be more useful than it sounds on the surface.

Here’s why:

Being able to buy Iberia Avios basically means you can buy ANY type of Avios since you can transfer them freely between airlines like British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, and Finnair.

I’ve been eyeing a flight from Helsinki to Jakarta later this year which costs 40,000 Avios.

Right now, I have exactly 37,500 Avios sitting in my British Airways account. With this 25% bonus offer, I could simply buy 2,000 Avios for $65.

With the 25% bonus, this would give me enough to book the flight I want.

It’s not a great price per point, but if I can unlock a $1,000 flight for $65, it’s not a bad deal.

Of course, what I’ll likely do is just transfer points from this card or this card, both of which I recently opened.

In fact, you can transfer points from any of the following banks to various Avios programs if you want to pad your balance:

• MR Points

• Capital One Miles

• UR Points

• Bilt Rewards

Still, if you don’t have access to transferrable points (or want to save them for something else), buying some points to top up your balance could be a great alternative.

As I hope you know, we have a community called the Daily Drop Lounge. 

It’s a great place to hang out with like-minded travelers, learn new tips, and get the inside scoop about time-sensitive deals.

Sometimes, it’s a place for people to share epic travel wins they’ve experienced.

In fact, our Community Manager Megan just had a pretty epic win herself, which resulted in her being gifted 80,000 Virgin Atlantic miles. 👇

So come check out the post, and feel free to ask questions or post wins of your own.

See you there! 😊

That’s gonna finish off the week, folks! Next time you hear from me, I’ll be somewhere far, far away - and I’ll have some tasty new travel tips for you. 😊

Take care, have a great weekend, and I’ll see you bright and early on Monday.

7.5695° S, 110.8250° E