Thanks to not doing much significant travel over the last while I have so many Chase Ultimate Points from our Sapphire Preferred. I've used a small number to book hotels (boutique) through their Expedia Portal. However, especially with the mess that is air travel this summer (and probably for the foreseeable) I'm really hesitant to purchase flights through the system. While they're usually the same price as direct from the airline, I'm worried about the mess that might happen with a 3rd party TA if there are changes or cancellations.
“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,”
Most Chase UR points are a 1-1 transfer. But the value in them will be based on the redemption rate of the partner.
My suggestion would be to save them until you have a plan of what you’d like to do/where to go. Then see if any of their partners fly there or have hotels there.
IMO, Hyatt points are the best bang for your buck. They have low redemption rates, so the transfer goes further. I stayed at a local Hyatt Place last week for 5k points.
Plus, they just bought all of the AM Resort properties and some places in Cancun are only 12k a night for 2 for all-inclusive! If only we didn’t literally spend $8k on Hawaii (plus a LOT of points), I’d be booking a trip very soon.
As far as needing a specific CC, you don’t. Any rewards program will let you sign up for free. But if you want to fly somewhere and are short some points after the transfer, then you could always look for a specific CC to get the bonus points to make it work.
There is a travel group on Facebook called 10xs travel. They have a course (it’s easy) on how to get the most out of transferring your points. It’s a big complicated, so I highly recommend taking the course.
Don’t transfer them until you have a plan to use them and know that your flights are available with miles. You just need to have an airline miles account to transfer the miles to, you don’t need the airline branded credit card.
I usually transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to United or Southwest depending on where I am going because they both hub out of my airport. So like I transferred some to United to go to Portugal for spring break this year and Thailand next year and some to southwest to go to Belize in a couple weeks and a wedding in WI next month. But I leave them in Chase until I am booking. The miles transfers for United and southwest are virtually instantaneous. I also understand the reward redemption rates and what is a good deal for United and southwest. I’d look at the reward chart for whatever airline you are considering to make sure you understand what the baseline miles cost is for the flights you are considering. And also understand how many miles tickets are out there for any route you are considering. Because if there aren’t actually many reward flights available then you transferred your miles to something that you can’t use easily.
FWIW, I've found the Chase travel customer service to be pretty good actually. We had a flight cancelled last year and the airline tried to just give me a credit for the airline instead of refunding my points, and the Chase agent was able to push back and get me a full refund. There was something else that happened a while back that I'm forgetting that I also had an issue with and Chase was able to straighten it out.
For last year we ended up finding our own flights and booking separately (they were through Spirit and about half the cost of our original flights, plus they were direct) so I didn't end up using Chase to rebook, so I guess IDK how they do with that.