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Our First Travel Hack Vacation Using Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

After building up a balance of more than 175,000 points my wife and I decided to pull the trigger on a short vacation in the Spring of 2020. After considering our schedules and destinations, we decided to visit a new country on a new continent. Here’s how we earned our balance and used our points towards a memorable vacation.

By Shainur Ahsan

The Coronavirus is currently affecting lives all around the world. We were lucky we were able to complete our trip before lock-downs and travel restrictions went into place. If you can hold off on travel for now, please do so to prevent the spread of the virus.

How We Started Travel Hack-ing

I had read and heard about the different ways to travel hack from the many bloggers and Youtubers who have been doing this for years using credit card churning. Credit card churning is the practice of signing up for new credit cards for the signup bonus. You can sign up for multiple cards at a time, earn points from regular spending, and combine the points to take a nice vacation or vacations at a fraction of the cost. 

Repeatedly, I came across the Chase Sapphire Reserve as one of the best travel rewards credits cards. The Reserve had great benefits such as being one of the most effective cards for travel rewards, having airport lounge access, and a $300 travel credit. All this did come with a high annual fee of $450 (now $550). There are many articles out there on the benefits of the Reserve (and other cards) and if it worth it for you. I decided it was worth it for my wife and I and decided it was time to learn to travel hack.

Building a Balance of Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to Travel Hack

Although not as nice as the 100,000 signup bonus that made the Reserve famous, I was able to get a signup bonus for 50,000 points. I continued researching and learned that the Reserve can be easily combined with some of Chase’s other credit cards to build up an even higher point balance. There are multiple ways to create a pair, trio, or quartet to allow you to earn more points depending on the spend category.

This led me to also sign up for the Chase Freedom which does not charge an annual fee and comes with a 15,000 signup bonus. This card has features such as either earning 5 points per $1 on bonus categories each quarter and 1 point per $1 on everything else. For comparison, the Sapphire earns 3 points per $1 on travel and restaurants and 1 point per $1 on everything else. You can also add an authorized user (my wife) for free to be able to earn even more.

Photo by Two Paddles Axe and Leatherwork on Unsplash

With these sign up bonuses and healthy spending on travel going back and forth to visit my wife in New York as well as travelling to Bangladesh, we built up a point balance of roughly 175,000 points in a year and a half. After analyzing (and probably over-analyzing), my wife and I finally decided on where to go. But first, let’s check out the ways we could have used our points.

What Can You Redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points For?

Chase calls their points Ultimate Rewards Points, and they are some of the most versatile points in terms of rewards credit cards.  You can use points for travel (airfare, hotels, rental cars, cruises, and experiences), cashback, credit for retail stores, and gift cards. Let’s run through all the categories but know that using points for travel will usually result in the most value.

Travel (aka Travel Hack)

Image by Danilo Bueno from Pixabay

Ultimate Reward points can be redeemed for flights, hotel stays, rental cars, cruises, and experiences. Redeeming for airfare and hotels can be the best way to get value from your points, and the best way to do this is to transfer points to  Chase’s travel partners loyalty programs. You can get really great deals by looking for awards flights and stays within loyalty programs. However, you may not always find this to be the best way to use your points depending on your itinerary, origin, or destination. I’ve listed Chase’s current partners below.

Source: Chase as of March 2020 (Subject to Change)

Ultimate Reward points can also be redeemed for travel within Chase’s own travel portal. If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, your points value is increased by 1.5X. Chase’s portal is powered by Expedia and the booking experience is the same as what you would experience there. Usually, you can find flights and hotels for most travel itineraries here. 

Source: Chase

Cashback

Your points can be used as cashback which can be applied as a credit to your account to reduce how much you owe for upcoming bills or be deposited in your bank account. Generally, this is not the best way to use Ultimate Rewards points.

Retail Credit and Gift Cards

Points can also be used as credit when shopping through partners such as Amazon or Apple. Gift cards are also available through Chase and sometime have a slight discount. However, even with the discount, redeeming points this way also doesn’t come close to the same value as travel.

How We Used Our Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

After looking through all the options for redeeming our points for travel, we decided to take a six-day trip to Peru in South America! We ended up using Chase’s Travel Portal rather than transferring for partner rewards after determining we wouldn’t have gotten a good value through the airline partners. Hyatt, which is Chases’s only worthwhile hotel transfer partner, also only had one location in the country. Hotels in Peru were relatively cheap anyway which meant using the portal didn’t hurt our points value. 

We used our points to book airfare to Lima, hotel rooms for the duration of our stay, and even a day trip to Machu Picchu. We decided to pay out-of-pocket for a roundtrip flight between Lima and Cusco, another day trip while in Cusco, and for most of our food. A tip I learned after the fact is to use the Peruvian rather than American website to book domestic airfare. We used the Chase Sapphire Reserve for all the food due to the no international transaction fees and the wide acceptance of Visa. We did carry cash for miscellaneous expenses such as taxis and small, local merchants. Here’s a breakdown of how many points we spent.

Points Breakdown

• ~80,000 – Economy Fare for Two Roundtrip Tickets to Lima, Peru
• ~5,300 – 1 Night Stay in Lima (San Isidro)
• ~7,800 – 2 Night Stay in Cusco (Historic Center)
• ~14,000 – 2 Night Stay in Lima (Miraflores)
• ~45,000 – Day Trip for Two to Machu Picchu
• 152,100 Total Points

As you can see, we booked a lot of travel with points to spare. The dollar equivalent of our rewards redemption was easily in excess of $2,000. Using points for experiences was actually a topic I haven’t come across much during my research. There was a wide variety of experiences I could have booked ranging from food tours to day and multiple day trips to many of Peru’s major attractions. 

I found day tours from Cusco available for Machu Picchu and decided to use points to bring down the costs of our trip. Though the Macchu Pichu point cost seems high, this was actually an OK value when I looked at the costs and effort to piece together a day trip by myself. 

After covering the main expenses, the remaining points were not quite enough to cover the Lima to Cusco flights which is why we ended up paying for it out-of-pocket. Here’s a summary of our out-of-pocket expenses:

Cash Breakdown

• ~$400 – Economy Fare for Two Roundtrip Tickets Between Lima and Cusco
• ~$250 – Cash/Local Currency for Taxis and Local Merchants
• ~$277 – Meals for Two for Six Days
• ~$260 – Miscellaneous Expenses
• ~$80 – Day Trip to Humantay Lake for Two
• $1267

You can see that the total cost of our trip was reduced to about 1/3rd of what it would have cost. Could we have further maximized the value of the points on our trip? Yes, but we were more than happy with what we were able to book within our six-day period. If our schedules allowed, we could have easily stayed longer due to the low point cost for hotels. This was also our first trip we planned using rewards points. We will inevitably learn to improve and get even more value on our next trip. 

Conclusion

In summary, you really can travel hack your way to a nice trip with credit card sign-ups and earning rewards points. We were able to use the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Freedom cards to build up a large balance of Ultimate Rewards Points that let us take an unforgettable trip to Peru. Using points to travel hack was much easier than I thought and I’m sad that I didn’t jump in sooner.  Here are some key take-aways from our experience:

• Sign-up Bonuses are Key to Helping you Start a Rewards Points Balance
• You May Have to do Some Research to Figure Out the Best way to Redeem Points for Travel
• Don’t be Afraid to Use Points for Experiences

Although the planning for our next trip will mean not being able to take advantage of the same sign-up bonuses, I’m confident we’ll be able to plan another fun trip whether international or domestic.

You can travel hack your next trip to make it much more affordable. You never know where you can go by bringing down the cost of your trip with rewards points. I’ve included some helpful links below to sign up for Chase credit cards and to learn more about using Ultimate Rewards Points.

Be sure to look out for a detailed post about our trip to Peru and the tips and tricks we learned during our stay!

Helpful Links

Sign Up for the Chase Freedom Card


The Points Guy – Chase Travel Portal


Sign Up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card


The Points Guy – Chase Travel Partners

Cover Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

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