Book a hotel, get free flights

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop!

A quick personal note before we get into things: today we're bidding adieu to April Wilson as she embarks on her next adventure. We’re both excited for her and grateful for the fresh perspective that she brought to the Daily Drop team. Not to mention her positive energy, the time she introduced us to weird Ohio, and her signature “goooo team!” followed by jazz hands (or a cat paw waving) at the end of team calls. 👋

If you enjoyed content like our Road Tripper newsletter, the Points Pursuit YouTube series, our articles about traveling to Japan, Italy, and Hawaii, and the various newsletters she wrote while I was sick or sleeping off my jet lag, reply to this email and tell her you’ll miss her – I know we all will.

With that said, the show must go on, and we’re at curtain up:

🏨 Book a hotel, get free flights

So there’s a nice little trick in the points and miles world that we don’t talk about often enough:

Booking hotels through Rove and earning INSANE amounts of rewards.

Here’s how it works:

When you book a hotel through Rove, you earn Rove Miles, which can be transferred to 22 different airline and hotel partners, including valuable ones like:

• Virgin Atlantic

• Lufthansa Miles & More

• JAL MileageBank

• Accor Live Limitless

• Flying Blue

• Qatar and Finnair Avios

• Air Canada Aeroplan

• A bunch more

It’s by far the best way to rack up transferable points without a credit card.

And the best way is through hotels with really high multipliers. Sometimes, the return is so good that you can book a hotel and use the miles earned to book your flights TO that hotel.

Example: London, England

Let’s say you book this hotel in London. It’s expensive, but it’s also a great hotel in a great location… and everything is expensive in London. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Anyway, as you can see, you’ll earn 24 Rove Miles per dollar spent here. So this 5-night stay would earn you a whopping 46,000 Rove Miles.

You can transfer just 42,000 of those to JAL at a 1:1 ratio and book British Airways business class from the U.S. straight to London, even from smaller cities like Cincinnati:

That multiplier isn’t even close to the craziest one, though… Take this other hotel in London with a multiplier of 42x Rove Miles per dollar.

A 4-night stay here would earn you enough Rove Miles to book those same British Airways business-class flights ROUND-TRIP to London:

It’s not just expensive popular cities

Regardless of where you travel, Rove usually has deals like this. For example, look at this hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.

It has a multiplier of 36x Rove miles, so a relatively cheap 3-night stay would still earn you more than 15,000 miles.

It’s not enough miles to get you all the way to Kenya…

But you could use them to fly round-trip to Europe on another trip down the road by transferring them to a program like Virgin Atlantic:

Stack this with hotel loyalty rewards

As you’ll see in some of the Rove results, some hotels are also loyalty-eligible. That means that if you book through Rove, you’ll also be able to add your loyalty number and reap benefits like:

• Elite night credits

• Status and member benefits

• Promotions offered by the hotel program

• Earn hotel points AND Rove miles

That last one is the kicker.

If you are going to pay cash for a hotel anyway, it’s worth looking in Rove to see if they offer it as loyalty-eligible.

For example, I’m planning to head down to Boston for a night to catch a Bruins game later this season.

My go-to hotel in Boston is the Hyatt Centric Faneuil Hall, and Rove charges the same price as booking direct with Hyatt:

But…

By booking through Rove, I’ll earn ALL of the normal benefits I’d earn by booking through Hyatt, plus 5x Rove miles.

Loyalty-eligible bookings typically don’t have very high multipliers, but it’s costing you nothing and giving you an extra batch of transferable points.

Oh, and I almost forgot – you can sign up for Rove and get 1,000 Rove miles instantly, no catch. Just use this link to do it.

The bottom line

We talk about Rove a lot – they’re always adding new partners and offering transfer bonuses.

Now, you have an idea of why you should be paying attention… and how to take advantage of Rove yourself. 😉

🏈 The weirdest new transfer partner yet

If you like sports ball, I’ve got good news for you. There’s a new transfer partner in town, and it’s not related to travel at all.

And today, I want to make sure you don’t EVER use it (maybe).

As of this week, you can now transfer MR points to Fanatics FanCash:

FanCash can be used to purchase merchandise through Fanatics, along with other sports-related stuff.

As someone who has recently been hunting for hockey jerseys, I can understand the temptation to transfer tens of thousands of MR points and buy some stuff…

For example, look at this new limited-edition Nylander jersey in a retro-style cream branding.

I’ll just say it – it’s god damn beautiful. And I want need it. Now.

But I also don’t want to spend $275 on it. So maybe I should transfer some MR points over. 🤷🏼‍♂️

To buy this, I’d need $275 of FanCash, which would require transferring 28,000 MR points.

Unless you have unlimited MR points, that’s not a good choice.

Here’s why:

You could transfer those same 28,000 MR points to an airline program like Flying Blue and book a flight to freaking Africa:

That flight would otherwise cost TWICE what that jersey costs. So the value is just not up to par.

There is one case where you might do it

If you already participate in Fanatics’ program and simply need to top up your FanCash balance, then yes - absolutely transfer some points over.

Also, MR points are pretty easy to rack up.

In fact, you could pretty easily rack up hundreds of thousands of them from a few welcome offers alone.

In that case, if you’re flush with MR points and don’t have a ton of travel, then sure. Use them for Fanatics.

As someone who has a pretty decent amount of MR points, I’m on the fence.

So tell me:

Anyway, if you also want to have a crap load of MR points, here is where you should start:

That’s all for today, folks! Hope you enjoyed today’s look at some unique ways to earn and redeem points.

Have a lovely weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday!

Ciao,

45.5088° N, 73.5878° W

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.