We recently spent two days in Paris, France during the peak season of June. We wanted our accommodation to be luxurious without spending too much money. So, we decided to use Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points to book our stay for free.
We chose Hyatt Paris, Madeleine, a luxury 5-star boutique hotel near Paris Opera house. It is located in the 8th arrondissement in Central Paris. The average per night cost for a standard room during our stay was around USD 700+. Instead of paying USD 1400+ for 2 nights , we used total of 50,000 Chase UR points to book this hotel. Here is how you can do it as well:
Step 1
If you don’t have a World of Hyatt account, create one now. Once you have the account, you will need 50K points in your account to book this hotel for 2 nights. We transferred the points to World of Hyatt from Chase UR account. The total number of points will vary depending on the hotel and the length of stay. If you don’t have the required points, you can rack up points quickly by signing up for a new credit card:
Apply for Chase World of Hyatt credit card and you can earn up-to 50K signup bonus points when you meet the minimum spending requirements. Apart from the sign-up bonus, the best thing I like about this card is that you get one free night every year you keep this card.
Apply for Chase credit card that lets you to earn and transfer UR points to travel partners. Two of the personal card options are: Chase Sapphire Preferred, and Chase Sapphire Reserve. Both the cards are currently offering 50K+ points as signup bonus when you meet the minimum spending requirements. There are freedom cards (Chase Freedom & Chase Freedom Unlimited) as well that lets you earn UR points but they don’t let you transfer those points to the travel partners. Chase also gives you the option to combine the points from all your Chase UR cards (2 Sapphires and 2 Freedoms) into one account. We suggest you put all the UR points from all the eligible Chase cards into one of the Sapphire card account. Once you have the points required for the hotel redemption, follow Step 2 to transfer the points to your World of Hyatt account.
Step 2
If you have 50K points in your Chase UR account, follow this step to transfer it to your World of Hyatt account. If you already have the points in World of Hyatt account, go directly to Step 3. To transfer the points, login to your Chase account and open the Chase UR portal for your Sapphire card. Click on “Transfer to travel partners” link and next click on “Transfer points” next to World of Hyatt. Now, enter Recipient and Member ID and click “Continue”. Enter number of UR points to transfer and confirm. The points will be available to your World of Hyatt account instantly once you confirm the transaction. See the screenshots below:
Step 3
It’s time to book your hotel using points. Open Hyatt’s website, and select the “Use points” option and provide your destination and dates. You should be able to see the available hotels with number of points required.
For the dates shown in the screenshot above, the hotel price was USD 580 per night or 25000 World of Hyatt points. When you use the points, you are getting value of 2.9 cents per point for this particular reservation. The price of this hotel can be as high as USD 700+ during the month of June & July, but the points redemption rate of 25K is fixed based on the hotel’s category.
If you have Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve card, you can even book the hotels directly without transferring the points using their travel portal. But, you get fixed value per point depending on the card. For the Preferred card, you get 1.25 cents per point and 1.5 cents per point for the Reserve one. As you can see, you are getting double the value per UR point by transferring it to World of Hyatt account in this case.
Conclusion
We talked about how you can book luxury Hyatt hotels with Chase UR points by transferring it to your World of Hyatt account. In the sample reservation above, we are getting value of 2.9 cents per point which is much higher than the fixed rate that you get when you book directly through Chase UR. But, remember this might not be always true! Always check the value per point you are getting before you transfer the Chase UR points to travel partners.
livingmydream.travel 