You’ve learned about travel hacking, you’ve put together a great strategy like the Chase Trifecta, you’ve optimized your spend and you’ve earned a ton of points. Now it’s time for all that hard work to pay off. You want to redeem your points to save money on travel. Getting this part right is just as important as earning points properly. Remember, this is like a two-part problem. The first part is earning the points and the second part is getting the most amount for them. In order to do that, there’s a few things we have to do before we start booking travel.
What are your points worth?
The first thing you want to do is to understand what the points are worth. This should have been done already but if you need a refresher, consult this article to learn about the value of points and miles. They are not created equal and you can’t get the best value out of them if you don’t know what you should be getting. You also need to remember how to calculate cents per point. See this article for a refresher on that. Remember, you are using the value of points as a benchmark and then you are comparing that to the redemption value that you are finding. For example, if you see a Hyatt at 2.5cpp and you know that Ultimate Rewards are worth 2cpp, then you can see that this is a solid redemption.
Open loyalty accounts
In order to transfer points, you need to have an account with that company that you are transferring them to. By transferring points, you are basically transforming those points from one form to another. Let’s use Hyatt again. You need a World of Hyatt account. So the first thing you need to do is Hyatt.com and then click on “Sign in or Join” at the top right to create your account. Once you sign up for an account, you’ll be given a membership number. This is the number you need to give to Chase to transfer the points to.
Although we are discussing this in the 400 level courses, it is important to register for all accounts that you may want to transfer points to way ahead of time. As you already know, Chase has numerous transfer partners and you can sign up for all of them or just the ones you think you’ll need. It is suggested that you do this in advance to make the transfer a little easier. Although you should be able to set up an account and then transfer points right away, some people have run into issues probably because the account was so new. It only takes a few minutes to create these accounts, so I suggest you do this now.
Creating account ahead of time also allows you to see award space for some companies. In this case, Hyatt isn’t a good example to use since you can search award space without logging in. However, in order to see the best rates on some airlines, you’ll need to sign in. Regardless, you should still create an account and sign in whenever searching for award space to make sure that you seeing the best rates.
Search for award space
Once you are signed in, search for the award space you want. This is easier said than done so it’ll require a separate article. Once you do find the award space, note the exact amount of points you’ll need. Going back to our Hyatt example, if you don’t like doing math, just click to make a booking. You’ll get a pop up telling you that you don’t have enough points. This will also tell you how many points you need. Keep that browser window open and open up a new one.
Transfer the points from Chase
Now you are ready to transfer points. Although we are using Chase as an example here, the same process is similar for other points currencies. Login to your Chase account and click on Rewards which should be on the upper right side. You’ll then have to click the card you want if you have more than one card. You’ll see a page giving you various ways to use points. Ignore all of that. Towards the top of the page you should see a link that says travel. Click on that and then you’ll see transfer points to partners. Click on that.
This page will show you all of the transfer partners as well as the ones with any bonus offers. Remember, just because there is a bonus offer doesn’t mean that the math is going to be that much better for you. As we’ve discussed in this article, not all points are created equal. If you wanted to make change for a dollar, you’d want back $1 worth of coins right? Well most travel hackers view these points as worth at least 2 cpp because they know they can usually get that from Hyatt. So with a Hyatt transfer, this will be at least an even transfer. With others though, that’s not the case. You are trading points that are worth 2 cpp to something that is less. That’s like giving someone a $1 and getting 70 cents change. Not fun huh? Not saying you should never do this, just that you should be aware of this. There’s going to be times when you want to stay at a specific hotel that is not associated with Hyatt. You can either use cash or points. For many, using points at 1.6 cpp is a lot better than using cash even thought they are getting a lesser redemption. Some people will only book Hyatt to avoid these redemptions where as other people don’t care as much. This is a personal decision.
So you’ve confirmed the math, you know how much the points are worth and you have a hotel picked out. You created an account and have an account number. You know exactly how many points you know how to transfer. Click on the transfer partner you want. You’ll be brought to another window giving you more information about this transfer partner. Click on the button “transfer points” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be brought to a new page to input your information for this transfer partner. This is why we needed to create an account before.
Now you just need to enter in the number of points you want to transfer. CAUTION: transferring points is a one way street. Once you transfer Ultimate Rewards to any travel partner, you can’t get those points transferred back to your Ultimate Rewards account. In other words, you don’t want to transfer too many points. Transfer the exact points you need or if it’s an odd number, transfer the least amount of points you can in order to make the transfer. For example, if you need 18,500 points to book award space, you want to transfer 19,000 points since you cannot transfer 18,500. You do not want to just pick a higher round number like 20,000 to keep it simple. You’ll be transferring an extra 1000 points that you don’t need. Those will be forever stuck in your World of Hyatt account. Better to keep them in your Ultimate Rewards.
Most domestic programs have near instant transfer. That’s why I said to keep that other window open. Once you transfer the points, exit out of Chase and then go back to your World of Hyatt account. You may have to refresh but you should see your points immediately. There are some foreign airlines where the transfer will take longer but for most people, they won’t run into any delays. Regardless of how long it takes, I suggest booking right away. Don’t put this off because there’s only so much award space. If someone beats you to it, there could be no more award space available. Completing an award booking is very similar to paying cash. You’ll go through most of the same steps as you would with a cash booking so don’t get intimidated here. This is the easiest spot. And just like that, you’re booked. You successfully got your free room or free hotel. Please note that hotels usually won’t cost you anything whereas you’ll have to pay a nominal fee for booking airfare with miles. Once you’ve completed the reservation, you can view and manage your booking just like you would with a cash booking. And that’s it! Easy right?
Stay away from the portal
I want to go all the way back to the beginning and point out that we’ve been talking about transferring points although there are a number of other ways to redeem points. In fact, when you are in your Chase account and you go to click on travel, you have two options: transfer points to partners and book travel. Why not just book travel? Well you could but you’re not going to get the best redemption rate. If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the Ink Business Preferred card, you’ll get 1.5 cpp. If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you’ll get 1.25 cpp.
Well that’s not too bad right? I guess it depends on how you look at it. Since most travel hackers are confident that they can get at least close to 2 cpp, most don’t think that 1.5 cpp is that great. On top of that, the portal gets a really bad rap. There’s a ton of horror stories about Chase screwing up the reservation. Thus, you’re not only getting a bad redemption rate, you could also get some travel head aches. I would just forget the portal even exists.
You may be wondering, why would anyone even use the portal? Because it is easy and there is a big audience of people that want the easiest way to do something even if it costs them money. Think about gas stations. Most people will go towards the one with the cheaper prices while some people will pay an extra 40 cents a gallon because they don’t want to wait at a light to get to the other side of the road. As travel hackers, we’re smarter than this so we focus on the transfer partners.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you can see how easy it is to transfer points. Travel hacking can be complicated, but this is as easy as it gets. It’s hard to make a mistake and there’s nothing complicated to understand. The entire process just takes minutes. Even though Chase was used as an example, other points currencies have similar processes which are just as easy.
If you’d like more help or if you just want to discuss miles and points, join our Facebook group and you’ll be able to learn from other travel hackers.