All Blog Posts 🗺️

🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

From booking hotels with free night certificates to looking at flights that are changing, we have some stuff to talk about today.

So let’t get to it.

Not a subscriber yet? Sign up free here

Get your brands in front of 8,000+ travelers & entrepreneurs. 

A Message from Me

💳 This Is Why this Card Is My #1 Pick

Right now, this premium travel card is offering a 100,000 point welcome bonus and it’s one of the best plays in the game.

If you know how to use those points right, (which you do because you’re reading this newsletter) you could unlock:

✅ Round trip business class flight to Europe
✅ A luxury hotel stay booked entirely with points
✅ Over $1,250 in value through the travel portal
Here’s how to do it 
✅ Spend $5,000 in 3 months and earn 100,000 points to redeem for premium travel and max value

👉 Tap Here To Check It Out

Travel News

Bilt letting you pay rent with any card (LINK)

If you’re paying rent every month, earning points just got a whole lot easier.

Announced just yesterday, you can now earn 1 point per dollar on rent using any credit card not just the Bilt card. All you have to do is set up a free Bilt account, connect your card, and pay your rent through the platform.

While this has always been a benefit of the Bilt card, it’s a solid workaround if you don’t want another card in your wallet.

What’s even better? This is a form of double dipping where you’ll earn Bilt points and the points or cashback from whatever card you use.

Some solid card pairings:

• Chase Freedom Unlimited – earns 1.5% back on everything

• Capital One Venture X – earns 2x points on everything

There is a 3% fee to use a non Bilt card, but if your goal is to earn points for travel, it could easily be worth it in the long run.

United cutting flights (LINK)

You can feel it with all the uncertainty going on right now, travel isn’t exactly at the top of everyone’s mind. And since United doesn’t have a crystal ball, they’re starting to cut back on some aircraft and routes.

They’ll be focusing on reducing service in Q3, mainly for off-peak and domestic markets. So if you were planning something a bit farther out, especially for fall travel within the U.S., your route might be impacted.

On the bright side, international travel is still looking strong, and United says they’re keeping a focus there.

Just a friendly reminder to check in on any flights you’ve booked way in advance especially if they’re domestic so you’re not caught off guard by a surprise schedule change.

Iberia making changed to Dallas to Madrid flight (LINK)

Apparently, and this one flew under my radar there aren’t many reverse red-eye flights coming into the U.S.

But starting in the off-peak season on October 28, 2025, that’s changing.

Iberia is shifting their Dallas to Madrid flight schedule, and here’s what it’ll look like:

Current Schedule:

• IB363 Madrid → Dallas: Departs 4:00 PM, Arrives 8:10 PM

• IB364 Dallas → Madrid: Departs 9:40 PM, Arrives 2:20 PM (+1 day)

New Schedule (as of 10/28/25):

• IB363 Madrid → Dallas: Departs 12:55 AM, Arrives 5:30 AM

• IB364 Dallas → Madrid: Departs 1:55 PM, Arrives 6:15 AM (+1 day)

Personally, I wouldn’t mind heading to the airport around noon and landing early the next morning, giving you a full day to work with rather than landing mid afternoon.

I’m going to dig into this one a bit more to see what award availability looks like, especially since Iberia has some pretty solid redemption rates when booking with Avios.

I’ll drop what I find in the Flight of the Week section.

🤓 Hacks

• If you’re booking a Hyatt property for up to a week and don’t have status see if you can ask someone that has a Guest of Honor or suite upgrades. Check out this facebook group but be cautious dealing with random people on the internet.

🛋️ Luis’ Lounge

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

So I’ve got two free night certificates with Hyatt, and I started looking around for the best way to use them.

Since I already did the work, I figured I’d walk you through my process and maybe it’ll help you plan your next trip too.

If you’re not familiar, Hyatt free night certificates are basically a voucher for one free night at a Category 1–4 hotel.

A lot of the U.S. based hotels in those categories either don’t have much availability or aren’t anything to write home about, so you’re usually better off looking internationally.

Step 1: Find a Hotel

I went to Hyatt’s site, clicked “Explore”, and pulled up the map.
Filtered for Category 3 and 4 hotels and just started browsing.

One property that piqued my interest: Hyatt Regency Trinidad. It looked solid, so I checked if they had availability for my dates and they did.

Step 2: Check Flights

Next stop: FlightConnections. I searched all the flights coming into Port of Spain (POS) and saw that United flies nonstop from Houston (IAH).

I jumped over to Seats.aero, entered my specific dates, and started searching. While I found some availability, I remembered that United flights can often be booked cheaper using Air Canada Aeroplan and sure enough, that 32k united points flight turned into 15k Aeroplan points.

No business class availability, but for a sub 6 hour flight, I’m fine flying economy.

Final Tally:

• Flights: 15K Aeroplan points each way per person = 60K roundtrip for two

• Hotel (if using points): 12K points per night × 5 nights = 60K points

• Total for 5 night trip: 120K points

If you’re using Hyatt free night certs for two of those nights, it gets even cheaper. And that 120K total happens to be almost what you’d get from a this cards welcome bonus.

Hope this breakdown helps you think about how to stretch your points and free night certs a little further. Let me know if you want more of these mini-trip planners, I kind of love putting them together.

P.S. if you have 500k+ points and want me to plan trips for you like this hit me up here. 

P.P.S. I’m launching a workshop soon and if you want to know more about it click the button below

Check out these crazy award deals!

🔬 Secret Travel Research

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

• Once you know what days direct flights happen you’ll have to hit flexible and click by day to see if you can find availability

• A little cumbersome but worth it

👀 My Favorite Finds

This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community

• These newsletters are changing the game (LINK)

• Would you pay 10k for top airline status? (LINK)

• Big Business spenders can get up to a 350k intro bonus (LINK)

• Why you should be careful when you don’t book directly with the hotel (LINK)