Why Hyatt continues to be my favorite Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are one of the best credit card rewards currencies. That's not just my opinion; TPG's August 2025 valuations peg Chase Ultimate Rewards points as the most valuable credit card rewards currency.

You can book through the Chase Travel℠ portal and get decent value from your Chase points. But you can often get significantly more value with just a bit more effort. After all, it's simple to transfer Chase points to World of Hyatt, and even easier to redeem Hyatt points for hotel stays.

Yet, despite that simplicity, I've gotten 3.69 cents per point when redeeming Hyatt points over the last two years. In my eyes, this makes Hyatt one of the most valuable Chase transfer partners.

Especially with the current welcome offers on the Chase Sapphire Reserve® (see rates and fees) and Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ (see rates and fees), now is a great time to consider how you can leverage World of Hyatt to get more value from your Ultimate Rewards points. So, let's dive in.

Why Hyatt is a valuable Chase transfer partner

Although Chase doesn't win in sheer number of transfer partners, it perhaps has the highest-quality set of transfer partners. And World of Hyatt is one of the easiest Chase transfer partners to get high redemption value. As with every Chase transfer partner, you can transfer Chase points to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. This means every Chase point you transfer to Hyatt gets you 1 Hyatt point.

Hyatt points are more valuable than most hotel points, with TPG's August 2025 valuations pegging their value at 1.7 cents each. I aim to get at least 2 cents per Hyatt point, which makes sense given the 3.69-cents-per-point redemption rate I've achieved with Hyatt points over the last two years.

This value comes from two major ways Hyatt differs from most other hotel loyalty programs: Hyatt uses a category-based award chart, and you can redeem Hyatt points for upgraded room types at reasonable rates.

Hyatt award chart

The Hyatt award chart lets me redeem 3,500-6,500 points per night for a standard room at Category 1 properties. And yes, plenty of useful and appealing Hyatt Category 1 properties exist in the U.S. and abroad.

For example, across the last two years, I've stayed at Category 1 properties ranging from the practical Hyatt Place Atlanta Airport-North and Hyatt Place Dallas / Las Colinas to the appealing Story Hotel Signalfabriken, Lindner Hotel Cologne Am Dom and Hyatt Regency Bali. The last two properties have since moved to higher categories, but they were Category 1 properties when I booked.

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Even if you prefer to stay at higher-category properties, you can still get good value when redeeming Hyatt points. Over the last two years, I've redeemed 25,000 Hyatt points or more per night on 14 dates. Across these 14 nights, I've averaged a redemption rate of 4.66 cents per point.

A 120,000-point three-night stay at Calala Island — one of the most aspirational properties you can book with points — that carried a comparable paid rate of $12,036 boosted my redemption rate (although the partnership between Small Luxury Hotels of the World and Hyatt has since ended, you can still book a stay at Calala Island with Hilton points). But even excluding my Calala Island redemption, my redemption rate at high-category Hyatt properties over the last two years comes to a still-respectable 3.16 cents per point.

Hyatt has some excellent high-category properties. Although I was disappointed by my stay at the Category 7 Park Hyatt London River Thames, two of my most memorable stays of the last two years were at Category 7 properties in the Maldives. I redeemed 100,000 points for a four-night stay at the Alila Kothaifaru Maldives with a comparable paid rate of $2,892, and 105,000 points for a four-night stay at the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa with a comparable paid rate of $3,519.

Redeem points for upgraded room types

What's particularly valuable about the Hyatt award chart, especially if you don't have Hyatt Globalist status, is the reasonable award rates for rooms and suites with Club lounge access.

For example, while a standard room at a Category 2 hotel costs 6,500-9,500 points per night, a Club-access room costs 10,500-13,500 points per night, a standard suite costs 11,500-14,500 points per night and a premium suite costs 13,000-19,000 points per night.

I've used suite upgrade awards to secure standard suites on several stays, including a seven-night stay at the Grand Hyatt Bali, a seven-night stay at the Hyatt Regency Bali, a five-night stay at Story Hotel Signalfabriken and a four-night stay at the Lindner Hotel Prague Castle. But if I didn't have access to these awards through Hyatt's Milestone Rewards program, I'd likely have redeemed a few more points per night to secure a standard suite at booking for some of these stays.

How I utilize my Chase points with Hyatt

I often joke that I see my Chase points as future Hyatt points. But, it's pretty true: World of Hyatt is my most frequently used Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner.

I have the World of Hyatt Credit Card (see rates and fees), and spend at least $15,000 on it each calendar year to earn an extra Category 1-4 certificate and six more qualifying nights. So, I earn some Hyatt points from spending on my Hyatt card.

I also buy the annual maximum of Hyatt points most years, which is 55,000 points yearly. But, when I've purchased the maximum number of Hyatt points I can buy within a year and my Hyatt balance is too low to book an award stay, I transfer the Chase points I need for my stay to my Hyatt account. However, if my redemption rate is lower than 2 cents per point, I book a paid rate.

The Ultimate Rewards transfer has always occurred instantly, with the points showing in my Hyatt account as soon as I log out and back in. So, I wait until I'm ready to book my stay before transferring Chase points to Hyatt. If Chase ever offered a transfer bonus to Hyatt, I'd likely speculatively transfer more points — but I highly doubt this will ever happen, since World of Hyatt is already one of the most valuable Chase transfer partners.

I have the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (see rates and fees), the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card (see rates and fees) and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® (see rates and fees), all of which let me earn Ultimate Rewards points on purchases. I earn most of my points via my Ink Preferred, which I use for most of my general travel purchases — including public transit, most flights and some hotels — since it earns 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 spent in combined purchases in select categories (including travel) each account anniversary year.

Related: I didn't expect to love World of Hyatt, but here's why I do

Bottom line

The Chase Ultimate Rewards program has many valuable transfer partners, ranging from well-known programs such as United MileagePlus and Air Canada Aeroplan to overseas programs such as Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and Air France-KLM Flying Blue. So, World of Hyatt is far from the only valuable Ultimate Rewards transfer partner. But it continues to be the program to which I transfer the most Ultimate Rewards points.

This is likely because Hyatt is the only hotel program I'd consider transferring credit card rewards to. The other hotel loyalty programs I use either have less expensive ways to earn points (such as buying points) or provide too low a redemption rate for me to transfer my valuable credit card rewards. Plus, since I don't have many Bilt Rewards Points, Chase Ultimate Rewards is the only currency I have that transfers to World of Hyatt. Meanwhile, I can access most of the other valuable Ultimate Rewards partners through other transferable currencies. So I earmark most of my Chase Ultimate Rewards points for World of Hyatt.