When it’s time to redeem your points, you have several options. You can convert to cash back at 1 cent per point. You can transfer to travel partners where your redemption rate will vary depending on what exactly you book and with what company. On average, you should be able to get 2 cents per point. A third option is to book travel via the Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal (or just the Portal). The rate will be between 1 cents per points and 1.5 cents per point. Wait, why would anyone even bother with that? Because it’s easy and requires no thought. Remember, what separates travel hackers from the average traveler is that travel hackers don’t take the easy way out.
Earning rate
The reason for the different earning rate for the Portal is that it depends on the credit card you have. If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card, you’ll get 1.25 cpp. If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you’ll get 1.5 cpp. If you have a Chase Freedom Flex, Ink Business Unlimited Credit Card, Ink Business Cash Credit Card or Chase Freedom Unlimited, you’ll get 1cpp. Although these redemption rates are not good, it takes no real thought. You know exactly what the rate is and you book the travel just like would normally. There’s nothing to transfer and nothing to really figure out.
The Portal
To access the portal, click on your Ultimate Rewards total. You’ll then be brought to the Ultimate Rewards page of your account. Click on Earn/Use up at the top and then click on Travel. You’ll then be brought to the Portal. From there you can book travel just like you normally would. If it looks familiar that’s because it is really just Chase using Expedia. Here’s an example of what this page looks like:
Portal Problems
Some of you may just want to keep it simple. You have the Chase Sapphire Reserve and you’re cool with just getting 1.5cpp. Why not just use the Portal and get your free trip? Well the problem is that there are countless horror stories. I’m not sure if anyone has ever really figured out why this is such a problem but it is. This is pretty strange because I’ve used Expedia for 20 years and I have never had a problem. Although Chase uses Expedia there does seem to be some type of disconnect between whatever Chase is doing and the hotel, airline or car rental that people are booking.
Don’t just take my word for it, you can read these Reddit threads on this topic
Beware of booking through Chase travel portal
Don’t use Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal for flights.
Don’t book through Chase Travel : r/CreditCards – Reddit
Now a lot of these people on these threads will say to never book third party (i.e. Expedia and Priceline). I don’t agree with that at all. I travel constantly and have been doing so for over a decade. 99% of my travel is booked with either Expedia or Priceline and I have never had a problem ever. I’m sure problems occur but if Expedia and Priceline were such a problem, I would have run into it sooner rather than later. I always make sure that my hotel, flight or car is actually booked. Again, never had had a problem that I had to fix. I think that the problem is with Chase (and other credit card companies). I don’t know what the issue is and why it hasn’t been fixed yet but the rates of problems with credit card portals seem to much higher than booking directly with Expedia or Priceline.
Conclusion
Maybe one day the Portal will be fixed but even then, I don’t see why you would settle for such a low cpp. If you are sophisticated enough to have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you should be able to get 2cpp or even more. If you only have the Sapphire Preferred, getting 2cpp is way better than just getting 1.25 cpp. The Portal problems are just another reason to stay away but the primary reason is to maximize your cpp. The goal of travel hacking is to earn the most amount of points that you can and then to redeem those points for maximum value.