While redeeming your points can seem intimidating at first, I want to encourage you not to worry! It’s simpler than you think! In this article, I’m going to attempt to walk you through the process one step at a time and try to explain some basic concepts along the way. I encourage you to take your time and take some notes and the best advice of all, is to practice! It’s all just theory until you hop on a website and try it for yourself!

What Makes Chase points so valuable?

Chase points are widely considered to be one of the most valuable points currencies out there. Why? Because of their transfer partners. The real value of Chase’s Ultimate Rewards points lies in the ability to use them with travel partners.

This is different from many other loyalty programs because if you earn points with a specific airline such as United Airlines, you can only redeem United points with United airlines. However, because of Chase’s travel partner network, your points can transfer to any one of the 13 airlines or 3 hotel groups that partner with Chase and be redeemed there!

HOW TO REDEEM CHASE POINTS

There are 2 primary ways you can redeem your Chase Ultimate Reward points for travel.

Use the Chase travel portal to redeem your points at a fixed rate (1.25 cents per point if you have the sapphire preferred card, and 1.5 cents per point if you hold the Sapphire Reserve card).
You can take advantage of Chase’s travel partners and transfer your UR points to other partners’ loyalty programs and redeem them there. (*this is the real secret to getting the most value out of your points*)

Let’s start by showing you how to use the Chase travel portal and then we’ll move on to showing you how to take advantage of travel partners and maximize your point value!

PART 1: USING THE CHASE TRAVEL PORTAL

In order to use the travel portal, you’ll first have to log in to your chase account and look for the ultimate rewards section on the right-hand side of the page. Click that and you’ll be brought to the ultimate reward dashboard.

Click at the top where it says “Earn/Use”. It should look like this:

Click on “Travel” and you’ll be brought to a page that looks just like most other online travel agencies you’ve visited.

Booking Flights on the Travel Portal

From here on the travel portal works just like any other travel website like Expedia or Priceline. The only difference is that you have the option to pay using your points balance.

As an example, let’s look for a roundtrip flight from New York (JFK) to Rome, Italy (FCO) in May. Put in your desired airports and dates and hit search!

The page will populate with a list of available flight options.

On the sidebar on the left, you’ll be able to filter by the number of stops, by specific airlines, by flight times, or class of service etc.

Add whatever filters you would like and hit select once you’ve found the flights you’d like.

For this example we’ll just go with the first flight on the list; the cheapest from Air Serbia for $1,023. Because I am a Sapphire Reserve cardholder, Chase is giving me a 1.5 cent per point value which means I can book this flight for 68,183 points.

Once you’ve selected your flights

You’ll come to a final overview screen that looks like this:

As you can see at the bottom of the page, you’ll have the option to choose how many points to redeem. This can be helpful if you want to pay partially in points, partially in cash, or if you don’t have enough points to cover the total, you can still redeem your points to offset the cost.

Booking Hotels on the portal

The process for booking hotels on the portal is exactly the same, Simply choose the “hotels” tab instead of “flights” on step one.

Once you hit search you’ll get a results page just like other travel websites where you can filter by rating, distance, amenities, or even search for a specific hotel name or chain.

Simply find the hotel you’d like to book and choose your room. You’ll be brought to a trip details page that looks like this:

Again, you’ll have the option to specify how many points you would like to redeem, and then you checkout just like any other travel website! Using the portal is about as simple as it gets!

Now, a note about using the portal to book travel:

It’s important to understand that when you book using the portal, the booking comes through to the hotel or airline as a cash-based OTA (online travel agency) booking.
This means that to them, it’s no different from a booking made on Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, or Booking.com.
Why does this matter?
Because hotels and airlines always show preference to customers who book directly with them. If you have any issues with your booking or need to make any changes, it can get complicated because the hotel or airline will make you go through Chase Travel to sort it out. Not always a bad thing, but it’s definitely worth knowing.

Now earlier I said that transferring points to travel partners is where the real value is. While this requires a little more legwork…you can almost always get significantly more value out of your points by taking advantage of travel partners. So let’s dive in!

PART 2: USING TRANSFER PARTNERS TO BOOK TRAVEL

Many people understandably assume that because you have Chase points, you have to redeem them in the Chase travel portal. However, the travel portal is merely the baseline for redeeming your points. You will always get the minimum possible value going through the portal. This isn’t always wrong, but you should ALWAYS check transfer partners first before booking through the portal.

Chase’s transfer partners

Taking advantage of Chase’s transfer partners is the real way to get the full value out of your points. Chase currently has 13 airlines and 3 hotel groups as 1:1 transfer partners. That means that for each of these partners, if you transfer 1,000 Chase UR points, they will become 1,000 points in the partner’s currency.

You can find a list of all of these partners by logging into your chase account and navigating to the Ultimate Rewards section. At the top, click on “Earn/Use”, and then click “Transfer to Travel Partners”.

I’ve got a list here for your convenience as well:

AIRLINES:

Aer Lingus AerClub

HOTELS:

Now you might be thinking: “Okay great, I’m supposed to transfer to partners…but how do I know which partners I should look at? And where do I even start?”

First off a quick rule of thumb:

Never transfer the points from chase until you’re absolutely ready to book. Once you transfer to a partner, you cannot transfer them back. So you should start by running all of your searches, and deciding how you want to book first before transferring ANY points. Let’s start by specifically looking for a flight to book with points.

STEP 1: Running award searches

THE FIRST STEP —

The first step in the process of using transfer partners is to run what is called an “award search”. All an “award search” is, is searching on an airline’s website for “award space” — an open seat on the flight that the airline will allow you to book using points instead of USD.

How does award space work?

A common misconception is that airlines will let you book any open seat on the plane using points; this is not true. Airlines make only a certain number of seats on each flight available to book with points, and that number of seats is constantly changing. They can add and take them away at any time, with or without notice (typically without).

This is important to know because while you may be able to find availability on a flight when searching normally, running an award search for that same flight may not yield any results.

This does not mean you did anything wrong, this simply means the airline has not released any award space for that flight (or it has all been booked already). Will they release more? Maybe, maybe not! I couldn’t tell you. You just have to keep searching!

You’re going shopping

Imagine that you are shopping for a new TV for your house. You would probably start by getting online and checking the price of TVs on several sites right? I’m thinking, Amazon, Target, Wal-mart, Best Buy etc. You’d probably take notes and write down the price of the TVs at each of the stores. You’d also note if any of the stores were running any sales, and note free shipping etc. Then based on all of the information you have, you would choose the best place to buy your TV! The process of finding a good points redemption is almost the same.

To illustrate this let’s use the same example we used above in the travel portal section. We’re pretending that you’re looking for flights from JFK airport in New York, to FCO airport in Rome, Italy.

The first thing you are going to do is make a list of each of the Chase transfer partners. (You can also download our Chase UR redemption tool which has this already done for you). Then you’re going to work your way down the list running an award search on each of the partner’s sites for flights between JFK and FCO. It’s going to take you a little while at first, that is OKAY. It’s great practice to get familiar with running award searches!

In fact, let’s go ahead and do one together so that you can get the hang of it.

SIDE NOTE**: I highly encourage you to go ahead and actually do this with me… there’s no replacement for actually practicing running award searches. Once you’ve run your first award search, I guarantee you will feel SO much more comfortable doing it. Just get the first one under your belt, then it will all make more sense. So follow along with me in another window and try it yourself!

UNITED AIRLINES SEARCH

To begin, we’re going to run a search on United Airlines. I know it’s not the first one on the list, but it’s a great website for illustrating so just go with it! Head to United Airline’s website and go ahead and signup for their free loyalty program mileage plan.

Input the necessary info and be sure to check the “Book with Miles” box before hitting “find flights”. If your dates are flexible you can also select the “flexible dates” checkbox.

After you hit “find flights” you’ll be brought to a page that has a list of united airlines flights, as well as United partner flights.

A QUICK NOTE ABOUT AIRLINE ALLIANCES:

While I’m not going to get into the weeds of airline alliances in this article, it’s helpful to know that there are 3 major airilne alliances in existence. They are: One World, Sky Team, and Star Alliance. Almost every major international airline belongs to one of these partnerships. However, many budget or discount airlines such as Southwest, Spirit Airlines, and Ryanair etc. do not belong to any major alliance.
Why do these partnerships matter?
Because of these alliances, you can run a search on one airline’s website, let’s say United, and see results for not only United flights, but also flights from all of the other airlines in the alliance!
United is a memeber of the Star Alliance, which means that when searching on United’s website for flights, you are also going to see results for other Star Alliance partners like Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Turkish Arilines, and Air Canada to name just a few. And the best part is…you can book these partner flights using UNITED miles right there on their website.
This also means that transfering your Chase points to United doesnt just allow you to use points to book United flights…but you can use your chase points to now book with any airline in the Star Alliance via United!
This may not make complete sense at first and that’s okay. It takes time to become familiar and confident with all of the subtleties of award booking. However understanding EVERY small detail is NOT a pre-requisite for being able to use your points. Don’t read this and feel overwhelmed and give up on booking at all…remember you already know how to book using points in the portal, and you are leanring to book flights using transfer partners. You can do this! I believe in You! We’ll talk more about airline alliances and all of their advantages another time, for now lets get back to booking with United!

The view you’ll see after hitting search should be something like this. You can scan across the top to see if any of the dates adjacent to the ones you selected may have cheaper flights. You can also sort by the amount of miles a flight costs by clicking “economy” like you can see highlighted in purple at the top of the column.

What am I looking for?

Now what you are looking for here (which United’s website thankfully highlights for us) is saver award space. Saver award space simply means award seats that the airline has discounted from standard award prices. Saver space is where the real deals are and as you can see the first flight on this list is a saver award seat for 33K miles one way!

You can also see on the left-hand side that this flight is operated by Brussels Airlines. This is a great example of a partner award booking coming in handy!

I also recommend booking award bookings in one-way increments. This is primarily so that you can find the best fares each way, but also it helps you out later if one of your flights were to change (or if you needed to change it) it wouldn’t affect the rest of your itinerary. It’s also important to note that contrary to cash bookings, one-way flights are not more expensive than round-trip flights.

Congratulations!

You’ve run your first award search and found a flight for 1/2 the number of miles that it would’ve cost you in the travel portal! Now you’re ready for step 2!

STEP 2: CALCULATE CPP (COST PER POINT)

How to calculate the value of your points

Step 2 is to calculate your cost-per-point value. This is a super simple way to make sure you’re getting a good redemption value for your points. It’s made even more simple if you’re using my chase UR redemption tool!

Once you know how many points your flight is going to cost to redeem, you need to find out how much that same flight costs in cash. United makes this super simple as you can simply select the “money” option in the top right of the screen instead of the “miles” option.

This same flight in USD would cost me $1,034. Now that I have that number the simple formula for find CPP is:

As you can see, booking this flight this way gives you a value of 3.1 cents per point! This is more than double the best-case scenario in the travel portal; which is 1.5 cents per point if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. If you have the Chase UR redemption tool, you can simply put in the cash price of the flight and the spreadsheet will do this calculation for you.

Now you know you’re getting a solid redemption value for your points, let’s say you’re happy and ready to book! Time for step 3!

STEP 3: TRANSFER YOUR CHASE points

how to transfer your points to partners

Okay so you’ve found the flight you wanna book…you’re ready to pull the trigger! So let’s walk through how to transfer your Chase points over to a partner like United.

First off head to chase.com and login into your account. Head to the ultimate rewards sections again and go to “Transfer to Travel Partners”.

You’ll be directed to the transfer section which has a list of all available Chase Transfer partners. You can filter by “airline” partners and then scroll down to select United Mileage plus.

Once you have selected this transfer partner, if it is your first time transferring you’ll need to input your United Mileage plus # which can be found once you log into your account on United’s website.

You will input your number and confirm that its correct and chase will link up with your United account.

From there it will ask you how many points you’d like to transfer, in this case, you’d transfer 33K points as that is the amount for the flight we found!

Click next and you will be brought to a super helpful overview screen that confirms the number of points being transferred, where they’re being transfered to, and what your points balance will be after your transfer is completed.

You’ll want to review all of this information because as you hopefully remember from earlier ALL POINT TRANSFERS ARE FINAL. There’s no getting them back to chase once they leave chase. So be sure to confirm everything is correct, then hit submit! Most transfers are instant so you should be able to log in to your United Mileage Plus account immediately after clicking submit and see the points.

It’s good practice however if you’re not sure how long a transfer will take, to google “Chase UR to Airline name transfer time” and be sure before making the transfer from Chase. Some partners, like Marriott Hotels, for example, can take up to, or sometimes even over 3 days. So if you’re trying to book quickly, that will need to make it into your decision-making process.

And there you have it! You now know:

How to use the Chase Travel Portal to book flights & hotels
How to run award searches with airlines and hotels
How to transfer your points from Chase to their transfer partners and take advantage of partner pricing!

If you’re ready to give it a go, or you’re in the process of planning a trip already, go ahead and check out my Chase UR redemption tool which will help make sure you’re searching in all the right places, and making the best possible decisions when booking award flights or award stays in a hotel!

I wish you luck in all of your searching and transferring and traveling! If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to email me at info@artoftravelblog.com.

~ Matt Borsic

A Beginner's Guide to Redeeming Your Chase Points!

IN THIS ARTICLE

Where to Begin

Don’t be worried