Yeah…it sounds complicated and intimidating at first but you get the hang of it after looking at things a few times. It's fairly easy math though. You can do the same thing with any travel you're booking including rental cars and flights. Just compare the dollars it's requiring for the reservation (you can look at that on Chase Travel and the United/Hyatt/Marriott, etc. direct booking websites) and divide that by the points the same booking would cost (there's usually a toggle when you're searching for reservations where you can get the quote in points/miles vs. cash).

I'd say $.01 for the cents per point/mile is the bare minimum at which I'll use points to pay for travel. Most airlines are in that ball park. Booking through Chase Travel gets you $.0125 or $.015 per point which is better than the norm…but I feel like with Hyatt I've had trips where I can book a $750 room for 25,000 points (which were Chase points until I transferred to my Hyatt account) which comes out to a crazy good $.03/point.

FWIW Summary: I frequently use SW and United for airfare and Hyatt for hotels. I've found that you tend to get way more bang for your buck transferring Chase points to Hyatt vs. transferring to United/SW or spending the points on Chase Travel.

Aggie09Derek said:

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But it's 1:1 there vs the theoretical 33% discount via portal.

I haven't used it in forever so correct me if I'm wrong.

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Hyatt points dont line up with dollar amounts. They often have hotels that would be $200 a night after taxes for 8k points all in. 200 on the chase portal would cost more than 8k points even with the bonus.

So the chase portal would show 20k points gets room and you get to discount that 33% down to 13k points you are still doing worse than transferring 1:1 and using only 8k points.

Plus point booking usually has no resort fees, free cancellation and the nights count towards status where as portal bookings don't always have that.

The best redemption rates are for long haul business flights but it's more work to find them for sure. But we get 6-10 cents per point that way, routinely finding $5-7k tickets for 50-75k pts. We save points for that and use cash for hotels because the redemptions usually aren't worth it to us

Seats.aero and pointsyeah.com are my main two websites to find them but there's roame and a few others too

JobSecurity said:

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The best redemption rates are for long haul business flights but it's more work to find them for sure. But we get 6-10 cents per point that way, routinely finding $5-7k tickets for 50-75k pts. We save points for that and use cash for hotels because the redemptions usually aren't worth it to us

Seats.aero and pointsyeah.com are my main two websites to find them but there's roame and a few others too

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Or luxury resorts. We got 4 or 5 cents per point for the Conrad Maldives. $2,000+ a night room for I think 70,000 points and a free night. This was also like 6 years ago so before some devaluations. But we still have the Waldorf in Hawaii earmarked for our next points vacation.

No, I get it. I just dont know the point conversions for various entities off the top of my head because I've never actually transferred points from Chase to hotel/airline/etc and then spent there.

permabull said:

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Aggie09Derek said:

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But it's 1:1 there vs the theoretical 33% discount via portal.

I haven't used it in forever so correct me if I'm wrong.

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Hyatt points dont line up with dollar amounts. They often have hotels that would be $200 a night after taxes for 8k points all in. 200 on the chase portal would cost more than 8k points even with the bonus.

So the chase portal would show 20k points gets room and you get to discount that 33% down to 13k points you are still doing worse than transferring 1:1 and using only 8k points.

Plus point booking usually has no resort fees, free cancellation and the nights count towards status where as portal bookings don't always have that.

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Agree with this - Hyatt points have the most value of all hotel programs, and it's not really close. In my opinion, Hilton is far worse, but is next best, with Marriott and IHG lagging behind the others by quite a bit.

Just got back from Grand Hyatt Baha Mar - 30k points per night for a $800+/night room (which I'd never actually cough up the cash for), with no $70+/night resort fee, taxes, etc. Also, as a Globalist, $50 per person per day for breakfast (you can easily use all of it), and a couple free drinks a day. Plus, I just reached the credit card spend level where they refund you 10% of all point redemptions after your trip. Not bad, all in all. Going to the south of France next month for a few days on a similar deal.

Hyatt has far fewer properties than the others, but they're mostly much nicer hotels in top notch locations. I pay for rooms in College Station for football games, and use my points on overseas trips. Can't believe I wasted several years on building up a million points with IHG - they recently dumbed down everything about their program.

Lots of cities charge upwards of 20% in hotel tax which turn those $800 rooms into $1000 rooms. Also a few Hyatt's give dining credits as part of their resort fee and I have gotten that credit when booking with points and not paying the resort fee

Ducks4brkfast said:

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I wish United would up the spend requirements for status. Need to further filter out the riff raff as the Clubs are waayyy too crowded.

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what does status have to do with cub visitation?

I have no united status, but have a club card to get in.