The hills are alive... with business class

Good morning! I’m gearing up for a quick trip to Vietnam, but I have some fun news and a good deal to tell you about first:

• 🏨 IHG 15% award discount

• ✈️ SAS million-mile challenge update

• 🎥 Daily Drop YouTube video

🏨 IHG 15% award discount

Many hotel programs drop sales periodically to help you save cash on stays, but few hotel rewards programs drop sales to help you save POINTS on stays.

Thankfully, IHG has just come out with a quick way to save 15% on award stays over the next couple of months.

As of now, this offer is available to people who hold this credit card (which you all should hold anyway), but it should be available to everyone by the time you read this.

Here is how it works:

When you book an IHG stay with points before February 12th, 2025, you can get a 15% points discount on stays through April 6th.

So yeah, pretty easy and simple!

To be clear, this deal does NOT stack with IHG’s 4th-night free perk that comes with this card and only applies to stays of three nights or less.

Still, you could use it with stays of one, two, or three nights and even combine multiple stays if you have a longer trip planned.

In my experience, IHG has some of the best rates already - so getting an extra 15% off the top is great.

For example, I have an overnight layover in Seattle next month and need to book a hotel. I found this Kimpton hotel for 25,000 points per night because of this sale.

If I booked a three-night stay there, I’d save 15,000 points total, which is excellent.

The only bummer is that the sale is only valid for the next couple of days, so you’ll need to jump on it right away.

You don’t need to register for anything or use any special code. Just go to IHG’s website and search for any hotel in the world to see the discounted rates.

Happy booking, y’all.

✈️ SAS million-mile challenge update (and flight giveaway)

As you know, four members of the Daily Drop team recently flew 15 SkyTeam airlines as part of the SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) challenge to win a MILLION miles.

It was sick 🤘

Well, I have one last fun update for you all…

And you’ll want to pay attention because one of you will be walking away from this newsletter with some of our millions of miles for yourself.

But first, I want to share some updates on the final stats of the challenge, as published by SAS. 👇

Here are some of the highlights:

• 42,718 people registered for the challenge

• 900 people successfully completed the challenge

• Winners came from a total of 33 countries all over the world

• A freaking FOUR-year-old completed the challenge (with their family, obviously)

• On average, winners visited 17 countries

• 70% of winners were male and 30% were female

The countries with the most people who participated are as follows:

• 173 from the United States (18%)

• 149 from Japan (16%)

• 130 from South Korea (14%)

• 112 from China (12%)

• 67 from Sweden (7%)

• 50 from Taiwan (5%)

• 49 from Norway (5%)

• 37 from the U.K. (4%)

• 22 from Denmark (2%)

Here is a map of every country with flyers who have received the million miles:

There were also people from places like India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan, which is REALLY impressive considering the many places they had to visit with weaker passports… so, mad respect for them.

Overall, it’s cool to see this data after all of the dust has (mostly) settled, and it's very exciting to see that SAS has now given out nearly a BILLION miles.

But that data is stupid and boring compared to what I’m about to tell you…

One of our other writers here at Daily Drop, McKay, also now has a million SAS miles sitting in her account 😏

And a couple of weeks ago, after I gave out a business-class flight to a reader using my own SAS miles, she got real jealous.

She INSISTED on also giving out a business-class flight to one of you lucky ducks (everyone say “THANKS, MCKAY”).

And to make things fun, here is how you can enter to win this very special prize:

Fill out the poll below and leave a comment.

Your comment should be your own revamped lyrics to “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music (McKay’s favorite musical).

Oh… and do NOT even THINK about using AI to generate lyrics. We have a tool that can predict the percentage likelihood that AI created something.

So we’ll know if you try any funny business…….

Anyway, one lucky creative winner will win a business-class flight to Europe on SAS worth 50,000 miles.

If you want a round-trip economy flight instead, no problem.

Want to bring a guest to Mexico in economy? That works, too. As long as it’s worth roughly 50,000 miles, McKay will book it for you.

So, get creative and submit your song lyrics to enter to win.

We will draw the winner this coming weekend on Saturday (so you have some time) and announce the winner on Monday.

And with that, we conclude our SAS updates! But before you go, I want to know:

The freaking Maldives.

It's the big bucket list destination for all travelers who want to live the life of the rich and famous (and who also don’t have $20,000 to drop on a 3-day vacay).

As you might expect, there are endless ways to get to the Maldives with points and miles.

And as you also might expect, Daily Drop is here to show you exactly how to do it.

Check it out 👇

That’s all for today, my friends.

I’m super excited to give another one of you some free airline miles, and I hope you enjoyed learning more about the final details of the SAS challenge.

For now, take care, have a great day - and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Cheers,

24.8797° N, 102.8332° E