This hotel is selling top-tier status

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the Hot Pot of travel newsletters - It’s a mix of all of the things you love about travel with a spicy twist… and for some people, it’s a little too spicy.

Today’s newsletter is not spicy at all… but I think you’ll like it:

• 🏨 Buy IHG Diamond Status

• 🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

• ✈️ Earn 4,000 Virgin miles in zero minutes

• 🎥 How to climb the credit card ladder

🏨 Buy IHG Diamond Status

A couple of months ago, I was faced with a dilemma…

I knew I’d end the year with around 50 IHG elite nights, and I wondered if I should divert my hotel stays to them in order to unlock Diamond Elite Status, which can only be done by staying 70 nights (or earning 120,000 Elite Qualifying Points).

I ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth it…

I didn’t want to spend 20 more nights in hotels without any benefits and instead opted to prioritize Hyatt hotels, like the one I’m literally sitting in right now.

But this morning, I got a tasty email from IHG that gave me a way to get a year of Diamond status without staying a single night.

And I suspect many of you got the same email… so go look now.

Here’s how this works:

Earlier, I referenced the fact that you can earn Diamond status by earning 120,000 qualifying points, which refers to points earned on paid stays.

Even with my 50 nights this year, I’m only sitting at 24,000 Qualifying points…

With this deal, I can BUY 100,000 more qualifying points and unlock Diamond status.

Even better, those qualifying points are also just… points points. Meaning I can use them like normal IHG points toward stays.

So… is it worth it?

Let’s crunch numbers…

Normally, you can buy IHG points for $0.005 (half a penny) each. So buying these points is definitely more expensive than normal.

With a 100% sale, 100,000 points would cost $500.

Since the same number of points now costs me $740, I’m effectively paying $240 for a year of Diamond status, but only because I am a frequent buyer of points when there is a sale, so this is something I’d do anyway.

For somebody who doesn’t have ANY qualifying points this year, you can just straight up buy Diamond status for $800 (assuming you’re eligible for the promotion).

Diamond status is the only tier of IHG status that comes with free breakfast for elites, along with a bunch of other benefits:

Personally, I have been staying at more and more IHG hotels. They have great deals and properties basically everywhere in the world.

If you’re staying at an Intercontinental hotel where breakfast costs $25-$50 per person, this investment could EASILY pay for itself with a handful of stays, especially if you travel with a family.

Oh, and one other thing you should know about…

The pricing seems to be different for everyone. 😑

For some people, buying the same 100,000 qualifying points is only $592, which is even more of a no-brainer.

Another thing to know - this is NOT the same as just going to IHG’s site and buying points normally. You need to use the link from the email you receive from them.

You can also try this link to check if you’re eligible.

So if you want easy top-tier status for next year (and a big stash of points to combine it with), this is a no-effort option.

🍪 Tasty Travel Tidbits

✈️ Air Canada has announced that they will be offering free in-flight Wifi starting in May 2025. As a lover of aviation, this is great. As someone who chose an annual wifi pass as my top-tier elite benefit with Air Canada… a little less excited. 😡

💳 American Airlines just dropped a press release announcing that this bank will be the sole partner of AA moving forward… it also included some hints that AA might become a transfer partner… 😏

📜 Are you interested in history? Do you also love credit cards? Check out this article about the history of credit cards… dating all the way back to ancient Babylon.

✈️ Earn 4,000 Virgin miles in zero minutes

Speaking of easy ways to earn a bunch of points and miles…

Virgin, the program that keeps on giving, is offering a bunch of people 4,000 free Virgin miles for doing basically nothing.

Here’s what’s going on:

If you are a Virgin Atlantic member and have not yet linked your Virgin Atlantic account to your Virgin Red account, you have probably been targeted for this offer.

If you simply link your two accounts (which is free and takes no time), Virgin will give you 4,000 Virgin points.

That’s it.

Once you get the 4,000 points, you can just transfer them instantly to Virgin Atlantic, where they’ll become miles.

Keep in mind that Virgin has started selling flights to Europe for as few as 6,000 miles one-way.

That means you’d need to send over just 2,000 points from basically any bank program to get a flight to Europe.

I mean… c’mon… that’s freaking awesome.

Of course, this deal isn’t for everyone. But if you have been targeted, you should have an email from Virgin that includes a sneaky little promo code at the bottom of the email.

You just need to use this promo code by December 24th after linking your accounts, and voila; you’ll be 4,000 points richer.

UR points are some of our very best friends in the travel world. They’re insanely valuable and can be earned on a number of different cards.

However, if you’re just starting out, you can’t expect to get the best and most premium cards that earn them…

Enter: The UR credit card ladder 😎

In this week’s YouTube video, Brendan shows us how we can climb our way up the credit card ladder—beginning with starter cards all the way up to the ultra-premium ones.

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed these travel deals - it’s nice to see programs dropping valuable offers to help us get a jump start on our 2025 travel plans.

Take care, and have a lovely day!

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