Marriott Bonvoy update: How you'll earn points and elite nights at 2 new brands

If you ever fantasized about sailing on the original Queen Mary, and partake of the food from another era…well, you can, sort of, return to those meals of yesteryear.

Black Friday is here and there's no better time to shop — or plan for your next trip. Take advantage of the deals below to score a discounted hotel, flight, cruise, and more to make 2024 your best year yet.

Standard International is launching a new hospitality brand, The StandardX, centered around its younger roots.

For a lot of Thanksgiving travelers and hosts, there's a mutual, perhaps unwritten, agreement: The out-of-town guests travel, and the hosts handle the cooking.

You have to hand it to The Standard: The hotel brand is approaching its 25th anniversary in 2024 and still manages to pack its hotels and litany of rooftop nightlife spots with guests and gawkers dying to be on the "it list."

New Hotels in the Cayman Islands for 2024 Scheduled to open in Q2 2024 is Hotel Indigo Grand Cayman. The 282-room 10-storey beachfront property will provide an upper midscale experience featuring multiple restaurants, a 6,700 square foot ballroom, a pool deck and a rooftop bar. Indigo’s restaurants and bars around the world are known as a favourite destination for visitors and locals alike. With sustainability in mind, the hotel is being built to LEED standards, which ensures high-performance buildings that have less of an impact on the environment. Hotel Indigo will use a geothermal/ice storage combination and will feature insulated glazing throughout to reduce energy consumption. The latest in Cayman real estate developer, Dart’s, hospitality portfolio, Hotel Indigo is expected to generate several hundred jobs when it opens. In 2022, Dart launched its Hospitality Training Programme, which provides Caymanians with the opportunity to obtain first-hand industry experience via a three-month work experience within the Dart hospitality portfolio.

Marriott Bonvoy is launching its biggest Cyber Week Sale ever, beginning November 21 through November 28 for members, offering 20 percent off their booking on stays at over 6,500 around the globe. 

JW Marriott has launched a new Asia-Pacific campaign, taking inspiration from the K-drama genre and starring South Korean actor, Lee Min-ho. 

For decades, hotel chains and car rental companies have offered loyalty programs to incentivize travelers to accumulate free hotel nights and car rental days. However, it's worth noting that many of these companies also allow customers to earn airline miles as a form of currency.

One British childhood winter experience remains the same, despite all the changes of the past century. It’s the one where you gaze out of the window, mesmerised by the falling snow, and start fantasising about building an igloo or a snow cave, then sleeping in it overnight. A few fortunate kids get to follow that up, but for most the fantasy is quickly quashed. The blizzard stops, the snow melts, you lob some slush at your mates then go inside to watch Ski Sunday.

This series of articles about credit cards, points and miles, and budgeting for travel is brought to you in partnership with The Points Guy.

There are countless ways to earn airline miles and hotel points — and some ways are easier than others. Did you know that you can rack up points and miles without spending money? Yes, we're being serious.