How I'm maximizing my favorite travel hack of the month

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the Willy Wonka of newsletters.

Why are we the Willy Wonka of newsletters, you ask? You’ll see in a sec… 👇

• ✈️ Daily Drop Golden Ticket promo

• 🏨 How to maximize the new Bilt/Hyatt promo (now live)

• 🌍 80-year-old besties hit all seven continents in 80 days

✈️ Daily Drop Golden Ticket promo

FYI, this announcement has THREE important parts, so make sure you read until the end. 😉

Some of you may have noticed a change to our newsletter last week… I’m talking about the glaring gif at the bottom of our emails that looks like this:

If you haven’t seen it, I’ll tell you about it.

We have officially launched our Daily Drop referral program! If you refer friends (or non-friends) to subscribe to Daily Drop, you’ll win prizes like stickers, clothing, tens of thousands of airline or hotel points, and even a one-on-one points consultation with me.

And all of that is only the BORING part…

The very first prize you can win is a pack of Daily Drop stickers for referring just five people. But if you unlock your sticker pack before the end of the week, you’ll have a shot at receiving an added bonus inside of your sticker pack…

And that special bonus will look like this:

The three lucky people who receive this Golden Ticket in their sticker pack will unlock EVERY referral prize, including the consultation with me.

If you’re lucky, I might even come hang out with you in person… 😮

Here are the specific terms, and make sure you read them carefully to avoid any confusion or disappointment:

• To be eligible, you must successfully refer five people

• If all five people subscribe to Daily Drop, you’ll receive a notification email indicating you’ve unlocked the sticker pack

• You must place your order for the sticker pack before 11:59 PM (Eastern time) on Sunday, April 23rd, 2023

• You are MORE than welcome to refer far more than just five people. In fact, it’s encouraged.

So just to be clear, you won’t be eligible after just referring people. You must place your order before the deadline.

This is a great chance for you to unlock items that would otherwise require hundreds of referrals with only a few minutes of your time.

Now you may be thinking, “Mike, how am I supposed to find five whole people to sign up for Daily Drop? That’s just too many, man.”

Well, my dear readers, we’ve got you covered; we have an entire post that provides some tips and ideas for ramping up your referrals. So even if you don’t win the golden ticket, these tips could help get you well on your way to unlocking some sweet swag anyway.

I’ll leave you with our patented “big blue button” to give you the rest of the deets. 👇

Simply scroll down to the bottom of the email to find your unique referral link.

Well…? What are you waiting for??

🏨 How to maximize the new Bilt/Hyatt promo (now live)

I know many of you signed up for Bilt’s Rent Day promo back on April 1st which awarded free Hyatt Explorist status with the added option of extending or upgrading that status.

As a refresher, here is how it works:

• Free Hyatt Explorist status from April 17-July 16

• If you stay 10 nights in the period, you’ll extend Explorist status until February 2025

• If you stay 20 nights in that period, you’ll earn Globalist status until Feb 2025

The promotion is now live, and everyone who registered should see their new status reflected in their Hyatt account.

Mine actually reflected a week early, which was incredible, given I just spent the last week at Hyatt Hotels… 😏

So today, I wanted to give you some tips for how you can maximize this promotion to both achieve the 10 or 20 nights more easily and earn more points while doing so.

First, it’s important to know that this promotion stacks with Hyatt’s Bonus Journeys promotion, which awards 3,000 bonus points for every two nights stayed between March 20th and May 26th. (More details on that promo here).

We’ll get back to that in a minute…

If you have some organic Hyatt stays coming up in the next month, that’s great - it’s an easy way to knock out some night requirements.

But what if you don’t have many or any Hyatt stays booked?

There is a strategy that will essentially allow you to cash out a chunk of your points in exchange for this extended Explorist or Globalist status.

Hyatt award stays are priced using an award chart, meaning the number of points you pay is fixed based on the category of the hotel.

The lowest category is Category 1, and hotels can cost as few as 3,500 points per night.

If you can find properties like this, you could theoretically book them, regardless of whether or not you need to stay in a hotel, and get a significant rebate on your stay, effectively letting you use points to “buy” elite status.

Confused yet? That’s okay, let’s do a little walkthrough. 👇

I’m spending seven nights at the Hyatt Place in downtown Bogotá this week, a property that is priced at 3,500 per night.

If you wanted to extend your Explorist status to 2025, you could simply book 10 nights at this hotel for a total of 35,000 points.

Because of the Bonus Journeys promo, you’d earn 3,000 points for every two nights, or in this case, 15,000 points back.

Therefore, you could earn almost two years of Hyatt Explorist elite status for a net 20,000 points.

Even if you didn’t need to stay in this hotel (maybe you are traveling to Bogotá and already staying at another property), you could still book this hotel, check in while you’re in town, and pay 20k points for two years of elite status.

There are plenty of cities around the world that have hotels at this price. For example, the Story Hotel in Malmö, Sweden is also priced at just 3,500 points, as is the gorgeous Hyatt Regency Mansarovar in Jaipur, India - both of which I’ll be staying at in the near future.

If you can do math, you’ve probably deduced that you could use this same technique to earn Globalist status for just 40,000 points (for all of the same reasons).

For reference, there are certain Hyatt hotels that cost 40,000 points PER NIGHT. So earning almost two years of top-tier Globalist status for the same price is a steal.

Finally, one other way to maximize the Bilt/Hyatt promo is to use your temporary Explorist status to status match to Spirit Gold status, using the promotion I told you about last week.

I personally did exactly this and can confirm that the match DOES work, even though your Hyatt status is only temporary.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about how I’m maximizing the Spirit Airlines Gold status to get a ton of free points, free bags, and even free “Big Front Seats.” So don’t miss it. 😉

🌍 80-year-old besties hit all seven continents in 80 days

I read this article the other day and felt pretty inspired, so I thought I’d share it with you all.

It’s really special to see people living their dreams and exploring, even at 80 years old. Definitely one of my life goals! 😄

Want to help Daily Drop take over the world? Share our newsletter with your friends/family/pets/colleagues/enemies and win some rewards in the process!

Sign up for Daily Drop to grab your referral link!

Or copy your unique referral URL to share with others: https://newsletter.dailydrop.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

Wow, that was a pretty epic newsletter, eh?

I can’t wait to see how many of you “go for gold” this week with the referral program, and I hope you’re as excited as I am about all of the beautiful opportunities currently being offered in the travel hacking world.

See you tomorrow, my loves 💕

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