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Sapphire Reserve math: When to book travel through Chase and when to transfer points
Jason Steele is a Senior Points and Miles Contributor who has been writing for The Points Guy since 2012. An expert in credit cards and award travel, Jason travels frequently across the United States and around the world with his wife and three children. Jason lives in Denver, Colorado, where he enjoys cycling, snowboarding, and piloting airplanes.
November 29, 2019 • 9 min read
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Quick summary
Booking travel through this rewards portal allows points to be redeemed at a higher value for reservations, including flights, hotels and activities.
The portal, powered by a major travel site, offers a wide selection of options, such as tours, car rentals and event tickets, beyond what transfer partners provide.
Using points through the portal can cover all mandatory taxes and fees, often resulting in no out-of-pocket costs for bookings.
There are scenarios where transferring points to airline or hotel partners yields greater value, especially for premium-class flights or luxury hotel stays.
What to consider
Some offers mentioned in the article are no longer available.
Booking through the portal allows partial payment with points and cash, but may not always provide the best value for luxury or last-minute bookings.
Hotel bookings through the portal may not earn elite status or loyalty benefits, and hidden resort fees can apply.
What you'll miss from the article
A detailed comparison of when to book through the travel portal versus transferring points to partners for maximum value.
Generated by AI with support from our editorial team.
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.
Traditionally, the most valuable way to use Chase Ultimate Rewards points has been to transfer them to travel partners for expensive premium-cabin flights, last-minute reservations and hotel stays at Hyatt. You can also use your points to book travel directly through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal, but with most Chase credit cards those points are only worth 1.25 cents each toward travel reservations.
The Chase Sapphire Reserve card is different. When you use points from that card, or combine your Ultimate Rewards points from any other Chase card, they are worth 1.5 cents each toward travel reservations booked through Chase. (You also get this benefit if you have the J.P. Morgan Reserve Card).
This might not seem like a huge deal, but the additional 20% in value could significantly change your decision-making when it comes time to redeem your points. It’s worth exploring your options for booking through the Chase portal rather than transferring points to one of the program’s 10 airline and three hotel partners.
Nine reasons to book directly with Chase
There are several advantages to booking directly through Chase’s travel site.
1. Booking reservations that transfer partners don't offer.
Would you like a free airport transfer? How about taking a tour or seeing a show? These are all ways that you can spend your Chase Ultimate Rewards points through their travel portal. And since the Chase travel portal is now powered by Expedia, you can choose from nearly all of the options that you'd find at Expedia.com. In the past I've used this option to see Cirque du Soleil, shows, take a hot-air balloon ride and take a tour. More mundane but cost-saving options can include car rentals, airport transfers and theme park tickets. This is how I once used my Sapphire Reserve to bring my vacation cost down to zero.
2. Low fuel prices equal low airfare for direct bookings
When oil costs are relatively low — as they are now — plane tickets tend to be cheaper. In fact, I frequently find one-way, domestic flights for less than $100, often with little advance notice. And when a $100 ticket costs just 6,666 Ultimate Rewards points, you’ll be booking the flight with fewer points than you could with any Ultimate Rewards transfer partner. So the next time TPG issues a Deal Alert, consider booking it through Chase and using your Ultimate Rewards points to pay for it.
3. The decline of saver award space and the growth of "dynamic pricing"
As someone who books the vast majority of my travel as award flights, I’m used to being extremely flexible when it comes to making reservations. But every year it seems like I need more and more flexibility to book saver awards to my destination, and sometimes that's not even enough. Now that several airlines have so-called dynamic pricing, it can be even harder to find a reasonably priced award using your miles.
But by redeeming your points through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel center, you’ll have access to flights on most airlines and pay the going rate. When traveling internationally, this could even include carriers that don't participate in frequent flyer programs and even some that you may have never heard of.
4. The ability to earn miles and credit toward elite status
Booking through the Chase travel portal will earn you redeemable miles and credit toward elite status on airlines such as United.
Just watch out for basic economy fares that don't offer all the benefits you need. Thankfully, the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal is pretty good at alerting you to these fares before checkout.
5. Airline reservations include all mandatory taxes and fees
Having to pay extra cash for taxes and fees is one of the disappointing realities of awards travel. Sometimes it’s just a trivial $5.60 TSA fee for a one-way domestic flights, but a family of five will have to pay that fee 10 times for each round-trip ticket.
When using your miles to book an international trip, you could be stuck with hundreds of dollars in taxes, government fees and airline-imposed fuel surcharges. Yet one of the beauties of booking flights through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal is that all of the mandatory taxes and fees are included in the price, and payable with your Ultimate Rewards points, leaving your total out-of-pocket costs at zero in most cases.
6. Use your rewards at a wider selection of hotels
You’ll generally have more hotel options when you book through the Chase travel portal rather than by transferring points.
Hyatt is quickly adding properties to its portfolio, but sometimes there isn’t one where you need to stay. Other times, a hotel chain might restrict award space to a narrowly defined selection of “standard rooms.” But when you book a stay through Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel, your choice of hotels is essentially the same as what you’d find through Expedia. So instead of choosing between one or two Hyatt properties in an area, you could have your pick of dozens of hotels across all price points. As with any online travel agency, however, you will need to play amateur detective to try to find any hidden resort fees.
7. The ability to partially pay with points
Sometimes you want to book an award trip, but you don’t have the points or miles necessary. When using traditional airline miles or hotel points, you have few options other than to buy rewards at a vastly inflated cost or to just pay cash for the entire reservation. But one of the valuable features of the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel website is that it can apply all of your available Ultimate Rewards points toward your reservation, letting you pay cash for the remaining balance.
8. You can rebook existing hotel reservations for fewer points
If you find a cheaper rate through Chase, you could cancel your award stay and rebook through the portal.( Image courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong.)
Four cases where you should still transfer points
Despite the value offered by the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel center when you have a Sapphire Reserve card, there are still some cases where transferring points to a partner makes more sense. Here are four examples:
1. Award flights in business or first class
You’ll generally come out ahead by transferring points when you’re looking to book premium-cabin flights on carriers like Singapore Airlines.
2. Last-minute flights on routes with little competition
Airlines love to charge extortionate prices for flights booked close to the travel date. If you need to be on one of these flights and you can find an award using points or miles with an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, you’ll generally redeem fewer rewards this way than you would booking directly through Chase. The same is often true when an airline has a monopoly on a particular route. If you're lucky enough to find award seats, then you'll probably realize well over 1.5 cents per point in value.
3. Reservations at luxury Hyatt hotels
You’ll usually come out ahead by transferring points when you’re booking high-end hotels like the Park Hyatt Tokyo.
When you’re booking a Park Hyatt, Hyatt Regency or Andaz, stay with your World of Hyatt points, you’ll usually get more than 1.5 cents in value per point. The exception is when there are highly discounted rooms during off-peak times.
4. Hotel bookings during peak periods
During a convention, a holiday or another major event that produces high occupancy rates, hotels may raise their prices all the way to the so-called “rack rate.” But if there’s a standard room available, you’ll get far more than 1.5 cents per point in value when you transfer your rewards to Hyatt and sometimes even Marriott or IHG.
Bottom line
Most of the attention paid to the Sapphire Reserve has focused on its outstanding benefits and rewards for spending, but the option to redeem points for 1.5 cents apiece through the travel portal has been underappreciated. By knowing when to book your travel directly through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel center and when to transfer to partners, you can ensure that you’ll get as much value as possible from this premium card.
Comments
By commenting, you agree to our Community Guidelines to help create a positive space for conversation. The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser, our partners, or The Points Guy (“TPG”). They have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these parties. All responses are submitted by individual contributors, and neither the bank advertiser, our partners, nor TPG are responsible for ensuring that all posts and/or questions are answered.
