Questions and Answers

Hello,

I am a little confused by the tutorial on how to book flights/hotels on the “Chase Portal”.
I will say first that I only have right now the Chase Freedom Unlimited Card, not the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, so that may be why.
Anyway, on my Chase Freedom Ultimate Rewards page, the booking for hotels and flights is powered by Expedia?
Is that the same for people with the Sapphire Reserve/Preferred?
Also, on an unrelated note, what is the best strategy for booking intra-Asian flights using low-cost carriers (e.g. AirAsia, Jetstar Japan)?

Thanks

Yes, Expedia now runs the Chase portal, regardless of which type of UR card you have. The difference in booking through the portal is that you can use your UR points to offset some/all of the cost of the ticket.

I’ll let someone else chime in on the intra-Asia flights.

For intra-asia flights on an LCC, it might be a bit cheaper booking on their local site, in their local currency, with a card that doesnt charge forex fees. I’ve done it before for travel on Tiger Air and Jetstar. I forgot which (maybe jetstar?) was having issues accepting my US card but luckily I knew someone local who could buy the ticket for me with their local credit card.

I am somewhat confused by the points redemption.
So say you get the [B]50,000[/B] promotional points from the Chase Sapphire Reserve, and the marketing claim is that they are worth [B]50%[/B] more on the Chase Expedia booking as opposed to the 1:1 point transfer and subsequent booking on say, for example, Southwest.
How could you possibly know (read:[I]calculate[/I]) which transaction is lower when one site operates on a different redemption than the other? Assume you are comparing same origin and destination on the same day.

Airlines redeem points in different ways. With Southwest, one SW point is always going to be worth the same amount of money (I’m assuming 1 cent, but if not, let’s use that number for this example).

So if you transfer 50K URs to SW, you can use those points to buy a ticket that costs up to $500. With the CSR, when you book through the UR portal, they’ll value each point at 1.5 cents, meaning those 50K points would cover a ticket that costs $750.

For airlines like AA/UA/DL, most domestic round-trip tickets at the saver level cost 25K points regardless of whether the cash price of the ticket is $100 or $1000. Using UR points to book through Chase portal, your points will be worth 1.5 cents each that way too.

[QUOTE=”Paul G, post: 60367, member: 4588″]the marketing claim is that they are worth [B]50%[/B] more on the Chase Expedia booking as opposed to the 1:1 point transfer [/QUOTE]

This is not actually the marketing claim, so this is a good thing to clarify.

They say that [B]your points are worth 50% more when you redeem for [I]travel[/I] through the portal — [/B]that means 50% more compared to redeeming for gift cards, etc., [I]through the portal[/I].

If you redeem for anything other than travel, you get 1¢ for each point. Travel with the CSR gets you 1.5¢.

You can continue to get outsized value by transferring points to partners at a 1:1 ratio.

(Just not necessarily Southwest, as a WN point is never worth more than 1.4¢ per point, and is frequently worth less.)