The best milestone rewards

Good morning from Cairo, Egypt. If you’re reading this, then that means I made it out of Libya, which is… pretty cool.

Anyway, I hope some of you enjoyed your long weekend — now let’s get down to business:

• 🏃🏼‍♂️ My favorite programs for milestone rewards

• 🏨 All-inclusive showdown

• 🤣 Meme

🏃🏼‍♂️ My favorite programs for milestone rewards

I’m on the move all the time… in fact, I technically don’t have a full-time home. Instead, I live in hotels.

So as you can imagine, I rack up a lot of airline miles and hotel points… But one thing I LOVE in a good loyalty program is milestone rewards.

Many programs are shifting to a model where they reward you incrementally for flying or staying with them, rather than just rewarding you with elite status for the big milestones.

I think this is a great way to get more value for your travels, so today I’m going to tell you about which programs I use for their milestone rewards and which milestones I’ve racked up so far this year.

1. IHG One Rewards

IHG introduced its milestone program a few years back when it rebranded its whole program.

The best part of IHG’s milestones is that they start at just 20 nights.

This means that even if you don’t travel enough to earn elite status, you can still get some nice rewards even from one or two vacations a year and some short weekend getaways.

Personally, I’ve already unlocked the first milestone with IHG, where I chose the points:

Generally speaking, I ALWAYS choose points for my milestone options, because I want quantity… the more free travel I can get, the better.

But for most people, I think the two food and beverage vouchers (worth $40 total) are probably the more appealing option.

The other thing I love about IHG is that once you get to 40 nights in a year, you get to choose TWO milestones:

As you can see, one of those milestones is an Annual Lounge Membership.

This means at properties like Crowne Plaza and Intercontinental that have lounges, you’ll get to enjoy access during your stay.

Sometimes, this even means free breakfast, drinks, and snacks.

But the best hotel milestone program is, without a doubt, Hyatt.

2. World of Hyatt

Like IHG, Hyatt offers awards starting at just 20 nights and going all the way to 150 nights.

Last year, I hit 121 nights at Hyatt hotels, so I got to choose a LOT of milestones.

Even at just 20 nights, you have the ability to choose a reward option like 2,000 bonus points on your next stay (at certain brands) or even preferred seat selection coupons on American Airlines.

At 30 nights (which I just hit a couple of weeks ago), you get a Category 1-4 Free Night Award AND a milestone reward option (same as at 20 nights).

Free night awards are super valuable. For example, I just spent ten nights at this hotel in Mexico City, which costs almost $400 a night.

But as a Category 4 hotel, you can redeem one of these free nights here:

Once you get past the 60-night threshold, you start having the option to earn 10,000 bonus points per milestone — basically 1,000 bonus points per night until you hit 150 nights.

Finally, I want to talk about an airline…

3. Alaska Mileage Plan

Alaska completely revamped its loyalty program on January 1st of this year.

Many of those changes are just now going into effect (and I’ll tell you about them one day soon), but I’ll quickly touch on the milestone rewards specifically.

The first milestone starts at just 10,000 EQMs per year, which is crazy low…

The reward options are nothing special, but it’s nice that Alaska incentivizes you to credit flights to them with that sweet, sweet instant gratification.

Even at 30,000 EQMs (after earning Alaska MVP status at just 20,000 EQMs), you can get some bonus miles, a flight discount, Wi-Fi passes, and more.

I’m personally about to hit the 85,000 EQM milestone, which allows you to pick TWO milestone rewards.

Since 15,000 miles is one of the options, you could choose this one twice and earn 30,000 Alaska miles.

That’s enough to book this flight from New York (JFK) to London (LHR) and still have a bunch of miles left over:

I’ll talk more about Alaska and why it’s so easy to rack up EQMs next week. But for now, here’s the bottom line:

Milestone rewards are becoming the future of loyalty programs… It feels great to be rewarded for your loyalty without needing to earn really high tiers of elite status.

So as you plan your travels, keep these programs in mind.

🏨 All-inclusive showdown

All-inclusives can be awesome.

There’s nothing better than showing up to a hotel knowing that literally everything will be taken care of and you can kick back, relax, and enjoy your vacation.

When it comes to major hotel programs, there are two that stand out in terms of all-inclusives: Hyatt and Hilton.

And in this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, we’ll compare the two to help YOU decide which one to book for your next luxurious getaway.

😂 Meme

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed this Monday edition of Daily Drop — I know I did.

While we’re on the topic of all-inclusives, tell me something:

Anyway, take care and have a great day.

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