Best and Worst Ways to Use Ultimate Rewards Points for Hotels

I'm Katie and I'm here because I know that travel costs add up , especially for a family , but I believe that travel isn't just for the rich .

That's why , on Points for Normal People , I share the tips and tricks that my family has been using for over a decade to help you use your everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your travel points so that you can pay for entire vacations every year . We used points for airfare for a long time before we started using points for hotels .

I think this is true for a lot of people . In fact , I'd probably say I avoided it for myself for a while because it didn't seem like a good use of my points . We like to book Airbnbs as a family to have more space .

I also like to book independent hotels when I can because I like the uniqueness and the idea of supporting the local economy , and booking chain hotels with points always seemed to use a lot of points . Booking chain hotels with points always seemed to use a lot of points .

I used to see posts about people booking these great hotels with points in far off areas of the world like Thailand , but we had been to Thailand when my daughter was a baby and booked a really nice guest house for about $30 per night .

But eventually I started learning more tricks to use our points for lodging in ways that made sense for us and ways that brought a lot of value to our life .

I'd say that learning how to use points for hotels also brought more diversity to the kind of trips we were taking , and I appreciate that this has even extended to my extended family , to my extended family Earlier this year our extended family of 16 , so my parents , my siblings and all the cousins all booked rooms with points at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun , an

all-inclusive hotel . This is not the type of vacation I grew up with , and yet here we can all go together in a very affordable way because we paid for this fancy hotel with Chase Ultimate Rewards points .

It ended up being a really fun vacation together and one of the big reasons was that at an all-inclusive hotel , the number of decisions you need to make is really reduced and the work Other vacations we sometimes stay at an Airbnb or rent a big house . Other vacations we sometimes stay at an Airbnb or rent a big house .

Then we divvy up the meals and the cleaning and we go grocery shopping and share the cooking . And sometimes we go out to eat and then we have to research where we're eating and agree . But on this vacation we had all paid for this all-inclusive hotel with points we had each earned .

And then once you're at an all-inclusive hotel , you're just there , so you just pick a place and go to breakfast together and then we pick which pool we're going to go to . We had a lot more time together , just being together , than we usually do , and this wasn't totally free At this specific all-inclusive resort .

If you book with Hyatt points but you have kids , you can either pay extra with points or pay for the kids in cash on arrival . So we paid for the kids in cash .

In our case , for our family , we ended up paying a thousand dollars for the four nights , to add our two kids , so a thousand dollars000 in total , but for $1,000 , we got a great relaxing vacation that included activities and food and our drinks . Unless you're a business traveler , you probably don't have much loyalty to a specific hotel chain .

You probably just focus on getting a good price . When you go to book a hotel and look for a hotel with good reviews , you may have even noticed that a lot of the name brand hotels seem more expensive . I know I noticed this . Learning about different hotel loyalty programs can seem complicated .

This is true even more than with airlines , because the cost of a hotel and points has a ton of variation depending on the hotel program . Today , I want to give you an overview of how you can easily use your ultimate rewards points to book hotels .

I'll share our favorite method , what I think is an underrated method and which method I can't imagine I'll ever use . Even though most people start off thinking that they want to use points to cover flights , I think overall , booking hotels with points is easier for beginners than booking flights .

It's a lot more straightforward , there are fewer variables and it's really easy to upgrade your experience if you want to .

With flights , prices are so variable that you can often find a really good rate to pay in cash if you're a bit flexible , whereas with hotels , there's less variability in pricing and cash , so your points can stretch further If you want to use your ultimate rewards for hotel stays . There are two ways you might do that .

First , you can choose to transfer points to Chase's hotel partners . These are Hyatt , marriott and IHG . Or you can choose to book a hotel through Chase Travel , which is an online website like Expedia , where you can use your points . Let's talk about transferring points first . Your ultimate rewards points can transfer one-to-one to Hyatt , marriott or IHG .

Ihg , if you're new to points , is Intercontinental Hotel Group . Ihg includes brands like Holiday Inn , staybridge Suites , intercontinental , kympton and many more . Marriott includes brands like Residence Inn , fairfield Inn , marriott , aloft and many more , and I'm going to tell you to ignore these as transfer partners .

Now , I'm not telling you to never earn and redeem points with Marriott and IHG . We do both . There's some good value in both of those programs , but generally speaking , you won't want to transfer your ultimate rewards to either of these hotel chains . I'll say that again if you missed it .

You generally won't want to transfer your ultimate rewards points to IHG or Marriott . If you listened to the first episode of season one , you know that I don't calculate cents per point .

I think people get too hung up on pursuing redemptions that look good on paper and don't celebrate often enough the redemptions that actually bring value to their lives in a way that's more intangible .

But I'm going to use points valuations very briefly here to show that if you want to book an IHG or Marriott hotel with your ultimate rewards , transferring them to those programs at the one-to-one ratio is almost never the best option . Marriott and IHG both use variable pricing for their hotels , so pricing may change . But here's an example .

I just pulled up a weekend date in June for the Intercontinental in Chicago . The price is $275 per night Booking with points . It would cost 46,000 IHG points per night If I transferred 46,000 of my ultimate rewards to IHG to book this hotel . I'm using a lot of points . In fact I'm using more points than necessary . Here's why .

If you remember , if I were to cash out my ultimate rewards points , I would get $460 for 46,000 points . So it would be better for me to cash them out as cash back . That would stretch my points further than a transfer to IHG . If I wanted to book that hotel , you could also book via Chase Travel for fewer points . We'll get into that later in the episode .

These ratios are pretty standard for IHG and Marriott . Typically , the price of a hotel is going to cost a lot of points with IHG and Marriott . Typically , the price of a hotel is going to cost a lot of points with IHG and Marriott specifically . Overall , this gets balanced out if you open IHG or Marriott hotel cards .

So the IHG credit card , for instance , will often have a welcome offer of 160,000 or more points . It makes a lot more sense to open one of those for IHG stays and use your ultimate rewards elsewhere .

That's why , as part of my three-year plan , I include a hotel-specific card , because IHG and Marriott both have a lot of great hotels and the best way to book them is by earning those points with a specific credit card that's specific to those programs .

The one instance I'd say might make sense to transfer ultimate rewards to one of those programs is if you're trying to top off your account to be able to book a certain hotel . In that case it might make sense if you're a few points short . I like both the IHG and Marriott hotel programs , but I don't transfer my ultimate rewards over to their programs .

Now , hyatt is different . Hyatt is actually the top way that we personally use our ultimate rewards points . I almost think of my ultimate rewards points as Hyatt points . That's because Hyatt hotels are priced lower with points than other hotel chains .

Next week I'll do an in-depth episode about Hyatt , because it is a favorite and I want you to know some of the details on it . But for today let's go back to our example of a weekend stay in Chicago in June . Remember how the Intercontinental cost $275 ? Or it cost 46,000 IHG points ? Well , here's how different the pricing is for Hyatt .

If I were to book the Park Hyatt Chicago , which is the fanciest Hyatt in Chicago , it would cost $682 per night , but I could book this same hotel with Hyatt points for 29,000 points . Do you see how those points are going to stretch further with Hyatt and also give you an upgraded value ?

You can use fewer points and stay at a hotel that costs two times as much as the Intercontinental , which theoretically might mean it's two times as fancy , although to be honest , I don't usually notice the differences Personally . We haven't stayed at the Park Hyatt because it's fancier than what we usually want .

So here's another example we could also stay at the Hyatt Centric Chicago for 18,000 points per night . This hotel costs $302 per night in cash . And what we also love even more is how cheap Hyatt's can get that same weekend we could stay in the suburbs of Chicago and pay just 5,000 points per night . That's for a hotel that costs about $130 per night .

If you earned a 60,000 point welcome offer that's 12 nights you could stay if you're picking those cheaper 5,000 point hotels , or you could splurge on fancy hotels for two nights it's your choice . Now , hyatt does have a smaller number of hotels than chains like Hilton and Marriott and IHG , but personally we haven't found that to be a problem for us .

Sometimes we plan a vacation where we book an Airbnb and then we can go anywhere , but if we're wanting to plan a vacation where we stay at a nice hotel or a resort , we will just find a Hyatt that we like and plan around that . This ties back into the mindset of planning with points . We come in with some flexibility .

I told you earlier about how we stayed at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun with my family . While we were there , my siblings and I started talking about where we should go to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary . That's coming up . We didn't start by picking one place .

We talked about what we wanted for a family vacation and what my parents wanted , and we decided we wanted a beach . We wanted a place that was relatively easy to get to . We wanted a place that would be good weather in November . We also wanted a hotel that had some fun amenities .

So with that information , I looked around at different Hyatt options and we settled on the Andaz Papagayo Resort in Costa Rica . Our family my immediate family had been to the Andaz Mayakoba , which is near Cancun , just this past February , and we really enjoyed the amenities and the activities at the hotel .

We did not enjoy the food prices , but that's another story . Now , this isn't an all-inclusive option the Andaz resorts are not but we decided to go for it anyway . Because my parents and my siblings also collect ultimate rewards points , it was easy to say yes to this option . Now this hotel , the Andaz Papagayo in Costa Rica , costs $1,000 a night .

We would not have paid that out of pocket , but 25,000 to 30,000 points a night . We can do that because we're always building up our Chase Ultimate Rewards stash . I will also say that I think it's nuts that this hotel costs so much with cash .

We are also booking an Airbnb for a few days before our time at the Andaz Papagayo and we can get a huge , beautiful house that's on the beach that sleeps all 16 of us for less than $1,000 a night . So less than one night at the Andaz Papagayo for four people .

But we want to try the hotel and enjoy the activities for part of the stay , and points will allow us to do that and enjoy the activities for part of the stay , and points will allow us to do that . Next week I'll jump more into the Hyatt program .

There's one more way to book hotels with ultimate rewards that I think is very underrated , and that's booking via Chase Travel . With Chase Travel , you're going to be getting a fixed redemption rate . If you have a Sapphire Preferred and you redeem 10,000 points , you'll be able to cover $125 of travel expenses .

With Chase Travel , you're going to be getting a fixed redemption rate . If you have a Sapphire Preferred and you redeem 10,000 points , you'll be able to cover $125 . This fixed redemption rate might be a lower cents per point than you'd get by transferring to Hyatt , but I don't want you to get stuck on that cents per point .

There are a lot of times where this will make sense . First , I want to say that if you start planning a trip and realize you want to book through Chase Travel , you might want to consider upgrading to the Chase Sapphire Reserve . We haven't talked much about this card yet , but it's a more premium version of the Sapphire Preferred . The annual fee is $550 .

A mistake I see a lot of people making is redeeming a lot of points through Chase Travel with a Sapphire Preferred . If you're going to redeem more than 60,000 points through Chase Travel , you should upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve . I'll show you the math on this . But ultimately it's because the Sapphire Reserve gets a better rate with Chase Travel .

The Sapphire Reserve gets 1.5 cents per point instead of 1.25 that the Preferred gets for bookings via Chase Travel . So if you redeem 60,000 points with a preferred card , you'll get $750 of travel . If you redeem 60,000 points with a reserve card , you get $900 of travel . So that's $150 more of travel that you're getting with the same number of points .

So here's why the reserve is better for this situation . You know the Sapphire Preferred costs $95 per year . The Sapphire Reserve costs $550 a year . That's $450 more . But the Sapphire Reserve has a very easy-to-use $300 travel credit . Any travel purchase you put on the card just comes off as a statement credit , even things like parking .

This is the easiest travel credit to use . So effectively , after the travel credit , the annual fee drops very easily to $250 per year . That's still $155 more than the Sapphire Preferred annual fee . But if you're redeeming 60,000 points and you can get $150 more of travel value by upgrading and it costs $155 more that's essentially the break-even point .

You'll actually be getting some upgraded benefits as well , so it's more than worth it at that point . But I just want to mention this because it's a common mistake . I see not looking into this upgrade . If you're booking 60,000 points or more worth of travel via Chase Travel , you often need to hold the preferred for one year before Chase will let you upgrade .

You should also keep this in mind if you're in a two-player household . If one of you has the Sapphire preferred and if you think Chase Travel seems like how you'll be booking travel , then maybe the other one wants to get a Sapphire Reserve .

In regards to hotels , chase Travel is particularly worth looking at if you're interested in independent hotels or if you have a larger family . In Europe , for instance , it's pretty hard to find chain hotels that sleep even a family of four , let alone a family of five or more . It's even harder with ultimate rewards .

In London , for instance , there isn't any Hyatt hotel that sleeps a family of four in a standard room . The cheapest Hyatts start at 15,000 points per night and you need to book two rooms , so that's 30,000 points per night . But via Chase Travel I found a hotel that sleeps five that costs 18,000 points per night .

Is the cents per point value higher with the Hyatt Hotel ? Sure , but it costs you more points out of pocket and may not be worth it for you . That's an example of when booking via Chase Travel might help you stretch your points further . It also opens up more hotel options , since you'll have a lot more independent hotels to choose from .

A lot of the hotels you'll find have a lot more independent hotels to choose from . A lot of the hotels you'll find in Chase Travel are independent hotels . Now , there are a few downsides to booking hotels via Chase Travel . First is their searching interface . It's just not very good . There aren't many filters to help you narrow down your search .

There isn't even one for including hotels that have free breakfast . You'll want to make sure you're googling that same hotel and looking up reviews before booking , because there's also no quality guarantees .

You'll also need to be sure to choose a refundable rate if you want the option to cancel later on when you transfer your points to Hyatt , it's really easy to cancel your hotel and get your points back in your Hyatt account . You can't put those points all the way back as ultimate rewards , but cancellations will go back to your Hyatt account .

With Chase Travel it will depend on the rate you book . Now , of course , if you need to cancel for a covered reason , it would still be covered under the trip cancellation benefits . You can review episode 9 , all about travel protections . If you missed this , chase Travel is essentially a travel agent .

If you book a hotel through them , it is adding a middleman between the hotel and you . But so is Hotelscom or Bookingcom , which lots of people use . But that does mean that if something goes wrong , you often need to call Chase Travel to resolve it .

One more thing to keep in mind is that if you book a chain hotel through Chase Travel , you don't usually get any of the perks you might get if you have elite status with that hotel chain . This , I think , is less relevant to beginners .

Unless you're a business traveler , you probably don't have elite hotel status and are probably unlikely to focus on it , especially at first . But I do want to mention this in case it applies to you . Chase travel can also be a good option for countries that have cheaper lodging in general . We used it in Indonesia , for instance , to book a few hotels .

When a hotel was $45 per night in Gili Air , which is an island off the coast of Bali , we paid just 3,000 chase points per night to book it . You'll hear a lot of people acting like booking via chase travel is a horrible way to redeem your ultimate rewards , but it really isn't .

It just depends on your goals and your travel style and how you want to redeem your points . If you don't have a specific goal for how you'd like to use your points in the next year , I'd encourage you to start thinking about that today as a little bit of an action step .

There's no perfect redemption and using your points for an early win can help you get excited about what else you can do with your points . I'll put a link in the show notes to the trip report section . On my blog , I used to have a better habit of regularly profiling different people's trips and how they use points to make it possible .

I'll also link a few stories you might find inspiring in the show notes . A lot of these stories are people who used chase travel or used Hyatt points to cover hotel stays . Take a minute to read these if you want some motivation or inspiration . Thanks again to everyone who has been reviewing the podcast .

This helps more people find it and it is so encouraging to me . I'm going to read one that came in this week and say thanks to Ray . He titled it start with this if you're new to travel points . And titled it Start With this If You're New To Travel Points . And says so .

I'm new to travel points and have been studying and trying to figure out where and how to start with this newfound hobby . There's a ton of information online , but Katie's podcast is the best and easiest to understand . She walks you through everything from the beginning . I'm so grateful I stumbled onto her podcast .

I keep refreshing the episode list hoping to see a new one . Haha , with her advice , I feel a lot more confident jumping into this space . I also recently got her free course from her website and I'm really excited to dig into that . Thanks , katie .

So I want to really quick , say that first of all , if you don't know when I publish new episodes , it's on Wednesdays . Really quick , say that first of all . If you don't know when I publish new episodes , it's on Wednesdays , so Wednesdays is the day that you can refresh and know that hopefully I put out a new episode .

That's my plan and also , if you haven't , if you're ready for some more information , I do have a little bit more deeper dive in my free course that you can go into . This podcast is still pretty new , so we don't have tons of episodes yet , but the free course has a lot of really good info to get you started as well .

Next week I will go more deeply into my favorite use of ultimate rewards points , which is for Hyatt . Then after that we'll be covering how to use ultimate rewards points to book flights . Thanks so much for spending time with me today and I look forward to seeing you next time when we'll continue to unlock these secrets of travel points together .