We’ve said it before: now is the best time to sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. That’s because the card is currently offering a whopping 100,000 points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months from account opening. This is arguably the best deal among all travel rewards credit cards right now.
But what can you actually do with that massive haul of Chase Ultimate Rewards points?
Whether you redeem them via the Chase Travel portal or transfer them to one of Chase’s 13 transfer partners, you could go a lot of places for just the cost of taxes and fees. Best of all, consider that the standard offer on the card is 60,000 points with the same minimum spending requirement—meaning you can score an additional 40,000 points without any extra work. Even with an $95 annual fee, we can recommend the Chase Sapphire Preferred as a travel rewards card. Just make sure to pay off your balance in full every month—no credit card rewards are worth paying a hefty interest for.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some great ways to use those 100,000 points.
Redeeming 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points via the Chase Travel Portal
One of the simplest ways to redeem your Chase Ultimate Rewards points is by using the Chase Travel portal. Here, you can redeem the points you earn on your Chase Sapphire Preferred card for 1.25 cents per point.
Pro Tip
By transferring to airlines and hotels, you’ll typically get more value out of your points than redeeming them via the card’s travel portal.
As a reminder, the card earns 2 points per dollar on dining and travel, and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases.
To redeem your points, log in to your Chase Ultimate Rewards account portal and then click on “Travel” on the sidebar. You can redeem your points for flights, hotels and rental cars.
A quick search for hotels in Miami, Florida for the weekend of July 23 to 26 showed some solid deals. For example, we found rates at the Hyatt Regency for only 36,454 points per night — meaning you could book two nights and still have a lot of points left over. For the same two nights, you would pay $911 otherwise.
We found similar deals in Los Angeles, too, such as at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in August. Rates here also start around 36,000 points per night when redeeming through the Chase Travel portal, instead of paying $459 a night in cash.
You can also use your Ultimate Rewards points to redeem for flights. For example, you could redeem 58,484 points for a round-trip coach flight between San Francisco and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on United Airlines. In cash, you’d have to pay $731 for the same flight.
A weeklong, cross-country trip for two on JetBlue in July, with free seatback entertainment and live TV, would set you back 75,708 points. You’d have plenty left to build up a stash for another free flight in the future.
If you’d rather use your points to fly a premium class, a roundtrip for one person from New York to Los Angeles on the same dates in business class, on Delta from New York and the return on United, would be 87,454 points. That’s a good deal for enclosed seats that turn into beds, plus free food and drinks, on a long cross-country flight.
A midsize car rental for that same July week in Los Angeles would cost 35,314 points with Dollar rent-a-car, also booked through the Chase portal. If you used 75,000 points for the flight, you could apply your remaining 25,000 to help pay for the car, and pay only $230 out of pocket—not bad for a weeklong car rental in a busy metropolis.
Redeeming 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points by Transferring to Partners
Although this requires one more step than just using the Chase portal , you will typically get more value out of transferring your points to partners than redeeming them directly through the portal.
Some of Chase’s notable transfer partners include United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Marriott Hotels, Hyatt Hotels and IHG Hotels. All of these partners have a 1:1 transfer ratio, meaning that for every 1 Chase Ultimate Rewards point you transfer, you’ll get 1 point or mile in the transfer program of your choice.
Chase’s full list of transfer partners includes:
- Aer Lingus AerClub
- British Airways Executive Club
- Emirates Skywards
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- Iberia Plus
- IHG Rewards Club
- JetBlue TrueBlue
- Marriott Bonvoy
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
- United MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- World of Hyatt
To transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to partners, log into your Ultimate Rewards account, click on “Transfer to Travel Partners” from the sidebar and click on the partner you would like to link your account to. From there, you’ll be able to transfer the points you’ll need.
It’s always a good idea, though, to compare prices between the portal and transferring to partners to see which is the better deal. In addition, you shouldn’t transfer points to partners without making sure there is award availability, which is the option to redeem your points for a flight or hotel on the dates you want. Once you have transferred points to a partner, you cannot transfer them back to Chase.
For example, with the 100,000-point bonus, you could book two nights in a Junior Suite King at the Hyatt Zilara hotel in Rose Hall, Jamaica, for 40,000 points per night and have 20,000 points left. Since it’s an all-inclusive resort, all of your food and drink will also be included.
You can also transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Southwest Airlines. We found nonstop flights between New Orleans and Las Vegas for as low as 36,302 points round-trip. That means you could go there and back twice, or book for a friend or family member, and still have points left over.
These are just some examples of what you can do with your Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000-point bonus. By transferring to one of Chase’s 13 transfer partners or redeeming your Ultimate Rewards points via the Chase Travel portal, you can score free travel, plus only the cost of taxes and fees, in destinations around the country and the world.