I keep reading that transferring points to airlines e.g United/Southwest is better than buying through the Chase portal. Is that hit or miss just depending on the flights? Currently looking at flying to Denver next fall and it's a fair bit cheaper to use my points in the portal (I think primarily because of the uplift) instead of transferring them to the airline.

Transferring is almost always better for premium cabins. Not the case for economy if you can find a cheap ticket and use the portal at 1.25 or 1.5 cents per point.

United and Southwest typically have high/crappy redemption rates for their miles programs, the better value for Chase airline transfers are usually with the international airlines like Singapore Airlines and KLM/Air France. Sometimes (alot of times) its better to just pay cash for domestic flights if you can find better deals with cash.

The absolute best value right now is transferring Chase points to Hyatt hotels. You can get a category 5 hotel, for 23k points per night, which is ridiculously low. A similar tier hotel with Hilton would be way higher. Although, Hyatt announced theyre going to raise their rates in May, so book now while you can.

The key with Chase points is you want to get at least 2 cents for every point. For example, 10,000 points is worth $100 in cash value. If you can find a cash flight for $100 or less, and that same flight is 10k points, then just book in cash. Its probably not worth using Chase points to book on the Chase portal unless you can find a really good deal, which is unlikely.

Texag5324 said:

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The absolute best value right now is transferring Chase points to Hyatt hotels. You can get a category 5 hotel, which is their highest tier, for 23k points per night, which is ridiculously low. A similar tier hotel with Hilton would be way higher. Although, Hyatt announced theyre going to raise their rates in May, so book now while you can.

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Category 8 is the highest category. They currently range from 35,000 to 45,000 points per night. In May the range will go up from 35,000 to 75,000 alongside the addition of 2 extra tiers for dynamic pricing.

Agree, book now if you have your eyes on a resort. It's not going to be cheaper

Kreg17 said:

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Texag5324 said:

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The absolute best value right now is transferring Chase points to Hyatt hotels. You can get a category 5 hotel, which is their highest tier, for 23k points per night, which is ridiculously low. A similar tier hotel with Hilton would be way higher. Although, Hyatt announced theyre going to raise their rates in May, so book now while you can.

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Category 8 is the highest category. They currently range from 35,000 to 45,000 points per night. In May the range will go up from 35,000 to 75,000 alongside the addition of 2 extra tiers for dynamic pricing.

Agree, book now if you have your eyes on a resort. It's not going to be cheaper

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Oops, edited my post!

I usually just use them for Hyatt, but will jump on a bonus point deal if the numbers work. Recently, Virgin was giving a 40% bonus on Chase UR transfers. I got 2.6 cents per point value by transferring to Virgin and using them to book Delta flights.

Marriott redemption sucks, but I have used a 90-100% bonus to bump my Marriott point balance up some to get a room. If it wasn't for the fact that I already had a chunk of points out there, I wouldn't have done it.