Cruise & Travel Toolkit
Visa requirements, tipping customs and currency for 199 countries, plus how your card's points actually transfer to airlines and hotels — one page, no digging.
Visa, tipping & currency by country
US-passport visa requirement, local tipping custom, and currency — for any of 199 countries. Start typing.
| Country | Visa (US passport) | Tipping | Currency |
|---|
No country matches “”.
Points & miles transfer partners
Where your bank's transferable points actually go — a starting map, not a recommendation to transfer speculatively. Move points only against an award you've already found.
Amex Membership Rewards
17 airline + 3 hotel partners. Sweet spots: ANA, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Virgin, LifeMiles. Transfer only against a specific award you've found.
Chase Ultimate Rewards
1:1. World of Hyatt is the standout - luxury hotels for relatively few points.
Citi ThankYou
1:1. Turkish Miles&Smiles reaches cheap Star Alliance awards; Choice covers all-inclusives.
Capital One Miles
Mostly 1:1, broad partner list - a flexible default transferable currency.
Public holidays by country — 2026
What's actually closed where you live or where you're headed. 197 countries, straight from each country's real public-holiday calendar.
No country matches “”.
Cost check: the Big Mac Index
A rough, famously simple read on whether a currency is cheap or expensive right now — the same burger, priced everywhere, converted to dollars. 53 economies, ranked cheapest to priciest.
| Country | Big Mac price | In USD | Vs. the dollar |
|---|
Local time & major airports by country
What time it actually is there right now, plus the international airports worth knowing about. 189 countries.
No country matches “”.
Typical conditions by cruise region
What to actually pack — average highs, lows and rainfall by month for 8 major cruise regions, from a real reference year (not a live forecast).
Directional reference, not a substitute for the official source. Visa rules, transfer ratios and tipping norms change — always confirm with the destination country's consulate or embassy, and your card program's current terms, before you book or travel. Visa data from the passport-index-dataset project (MIT license); country and currency data from REST Countries (ODbL); public holidays from the vacanza/holidays project (MIT license); exchange rates from Frankfurter (ECB reference rates, updated whenever this page's data was last built — not real-time); the Big Mac Index from The Economist (CC BY 4.0); airports and timezones from OpenFlights (ODbL); regional climate from the Open-Meteo historical weather archive (real past records for the reference year shown, not a forecast); tipping and points-transfer notes are curated by Seasoned Expat.