When people ask advice about starting in travel hacking, I almost always recommend they start with Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR). Our clients and ourselves have taken some amazing bucket list trips using UR. Let’s take a quick look at why people should almost always start here.
Chase Ultimate Rewards are easy to obtain
There are seven main cards (four business and three personal) to gain Ultimate Rewards, including four without annual fees. Sign-up bonuses alone could get you over 300,000 points! For the personal cards, they include the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve (these are basically sister cards, you can only hold one at a time and they have similar benefits), Chase Freedom Flex and the Freedom Unlimited.
Chase Personal Cards
On the business end there are the three Ink Cards; the Ink Business Preferred, the Ink Business Unlimited and the Ink Business Cash. In order to fully unlock the value in these points, you will need the Ink Business Preferred or either the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve (we will get into this in just a bit).
Chase Ultimate Rewards Business Cards
With the right combination of cards you can really maximize your ongoing spend as well. You will be able to earn a minimum of 1.5 points per dollar on any purchase up to a maximum of 5 points/dollar! Depending on how you use these points, that could be a value of 3-10 cents back in travel for every dollar spent (I value UR at 2 cents a point). Between my wife and I, we have 12 different Ultimate Rewards cards to help us rack up UR points each and every month.
Chase Ultimate Rewards are easy to redeem
While the Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Ink Cash and Ink Unlimited are billed as cash back cards with points worth one penny each, if you have either of the premium Sapphire cards and/or the Ink Business Preferred their potential is much higher.
With a premium card they are worth either 1.25 (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Preferred) or 1.5 (Sapphire Reserve) cents per point. This is when you redeem for travel through Chase’s own travel portal. Through the portal you can book flights, hotels, rental cars, and even cruises or tours. While this is nice, it is always the bare minimum for which you should redeem them. But if you want simplicity, it doesn’t get any easier than this.
Chase Ultimate Rewards has some great partners
The real value with UR (as well as any transferable points) is with their transfer partners. Points can transfer to 10 different airlines all at a 1:1 rate. They are Aer Lingus, British Airways, Air France/KLM, Emirates, Iberia, JetBlue, Singapore Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. Each of these programs provides value in different ways ranging from cheap domestic flights to outlandish international premium redemptions. Personally, we’ve booked using United, British Airways, Singapore, and Southwest. I’ve also used the others to help clients book amazing trips.
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Chase also has three different hotel partners; Hyatt, IHG and Marriott. Out of these three the only one I would transfer to is Hyatt. The other two will most likely cause a loss in value by transferring rather than booking through the portal. Using Hyatt points we have helped our clients book $850+/night rooms for 30,000 points, a value of over 2.8 cents per point!
All 13 of Chase’s Transfer Partners
Why Ultimate Rewards to Start
Chase Ultimate Rewards are the best points for beginners, because of their ease of use. Between the travel portal or some of the simpler transfer partners, it is almost always easy to get great value out of the points. United may not have the best value for transferring, but they have an easy to use search tool and low taxes and fees on flights for themselves and their partners. Southwest and JetBlue are fixed value and extremely easy to redeem. They also have the only truly useful hotel transfer partner, Hyatt. Some of their foreign airline partners are where you can really find crazy value. These redemptions are always a little more difficult to unlock, which is where Peak Award Booking can help. Through the month of June, we are offering half-off all award bookings to help you get your amazing trip planned and booked!
How to start collecting Ultimate Rewards
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The first card I recommend to beginner travel hackers is the Sapphire Preferred. It is the best way to get your feet wet and get you on your first rewards based trip. The current sign-up bonus is 100,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first three months (the $95 annual fee is not waived the first year). These 100,000 points would be enough for three nights at some of the nicest hotels in the world (values of over $1,000 per night), a round-trip business class flight to Europe, or $1,250 in travel on Chase’s travel portal. If you would like your own personalized plan, based off of your goals and individual circumstances, please reach out to us and we will develop your own very own credit card application strategy.
If you are a Chase Ultimate Rewards expert, what were your favorite redemptions? Share in the comments below
We already have two international trips booked and a third
on the way for 2020. At Peak Award
Booking we always advise to book early to find the best award flights. One of our trips was planned about 15 months
ahead, this allowed us to get the credit cards and points we needed for this
trip in time to be able to book at exactly 11 months out. Doing so allowed us to plan an amazing trip
at the high-demand time of spring break.
Cancun all-inclusive
Our first trip is a long weekend to the Cancun area for a friend’s wedding. This will be just for my wife and myself, no kids!!! The wedding is at an all-inclusive resort that isn’t affiliated with any rewards program. We could’ve booked this using our Chase Ultimate Rewards through their portal at 1.5 cents/point, but we tend to find better value for these points by transferring to airline partners. Instead we paid cash through a third-party booking company that had a very discounted rate available. We try to book direct whenever possible, but this deal was too good to pass up. We will be using Southwest points and our companion pass (earned via sign-up bonuses on Chase’s Southwest cards) for our flights down to Mexico. We’ve been able to book Southwest flights at buy-one-get-one free for the last six years, and as soon as my wife’s points post in January we will have it again for another two years. This perk has saved us thousands of dollars. The return flights on Southwest didn’t really work for us, so we will be flying United on a basic economy ticket. Luckily (or by planning), we have the United Explorer credit card and we can check one bag each, take a full-size carry-on and board early. This negates most of the issues of booking basic economy.
maldives and singapore in luxury
Our next trip is almost exactly a month later. Spring Break 2020 will take our family of three to Doha, the Maldives, Singapore and possibly Malaysia. We booked our outbound flights using American Airlines miles gained from several of their credit cards. They have both personal and business cards from both Citi Bank and Barclay. The four options with bonuses that occasionally reach 70k miles, give lots of options to build up your balance. Anywhere in the US to the Maldives will cost you 70k miles per person, plus taxes. We completely drained my AA balance to get three seats. The first leg is just a regional jet on American in domestic first class, but our 2nd and 3rd flights will be business class on Qatar Airlines in their amazing QSuite configured business class. We will be spending one night in Doha before our flight to the Maldives. We had a free night award at any Marriott hotel worth a maximum of 30,000 points that we earned with the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Card. The St. Regis Doha was exactly 30,000 points, making this a no-brainer decision for a quick stay. One more QSuite flight and a seaplane trip will get us to the Maldives. Here we will be using points we gained from American Express Hilton branded credit cards as well as one free night certificate from the Hilton Aspire credit card to stay at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. The Conrad Maldives considers their Overwater Bungalow a base room redemption, this allows us to use points and book five nights for the price of four! We will be splitting our time between the Overwater Bungalow and the Beach Villa. We’ve heard that with children that the beach villa is a much better option, but we still couldn’t pass up the option to stay in an over-water bungalow for free. Not only will we be staying for free for six nights, we also will get $500 off our seaplane flights and diamond status from our Aspire Card. Diamond status will most likely not get us any upgrades, but we will get free breakfast, happy hour (free drinks and snacks) and afternoon tea (more free snacks). The savings on food alone really adds up!
We will then depart from the Maldives and head to Singapore aboard Singapore Airlines in business class. We booked this flight as part of a one-way flight from the Maldives to Los Angeles with a stop-over in Singapore. The total cost of these flights was 109,000 miles each plus $100/person for the stop-over. We transferred points from Chase to Singapore Airlines to book these flights. Most of the points came from business card sign-ups from their Ink line (Ink Preferred, Ink Cash or Ink Unlimited). These two flights will be on their lie-flat equipped planes. We’ve already selected our meals for the flight from Singapore to Los Angeles using their “Book the Cook” menu, where you can select your meal ahead of time from a large menu of options (lobster thermidor, anyone?).
Singapore Airlines Lobster Thermidor
In Singapore for our “stop-over”, we will be staying at the
Conrad Centennial Singapore for five nights.
Again, we will be using points we earned from either new Amex Hilton
cards or from upgrade offers from American Express. We used the fifth night free option again to
get an extra night free. Diamond status
will get us a possible upgrade, free breakfast and lounge access. While in Singapore we took advantage of an
Expedia promotion that offered 50% off activities to get a lot of excursions we
had already planned. We will be visiting
the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Bird Park, River Safari, Aquarium, Singapore
Flyer and more at a nice discount. We
may also take a day trip over to Malaysia for the LegoLand Park. After an exhausting five days in Singapore,
we’ll fly in Singapore Airlines business class to Los Angeles. Hopefully, we will have enough diversions to
keep a six-year-old busy for 15 hours in a metal tube.
Upon landing in Los Angeles we’ll spend a night at the Crowne Plaza LAX Airport. We redeemed a free night from our IHG credit card to book the closest hotel to the airport. The next morning, we will trade the luxury of Singapore business class for the simplicity of Southwest. We’ll be using points and our companion pass to once again get us back home for the cost of just taxes on the flight.
african safari and victoria falls
Our last currently planned trip will be my 40th birthday trip. It’ll be just my wife and I again. After cycling through about eleventeen different options (Venice and Rome, Hawaii, Tokyo, Bora Bora and Easter Island…), I finally found what I wanted all along… Perfect flights to Southern Africa. We will spend two weeks going through Botswana to Victoria Falls. We’ll have eight days of insanely expensive luxury safaris and three days of adventure activities in Victoria Falls. What better way to celebrate turning 40 than jumping off a bridge or rafting one of the world’s most dangerous rivers?
Victoria Falls
Our only points usage will be for flights, but they are nice
flights indeed. We will have a second
turn in one year on Qatar QSuites flying into Johannesburg. This is another 150,000 AA miles being used,
which will leave us with only about 50,000 left (time to build those back
up!). Our return was booked using United
miles, from Victoria Falls back home.
The long-haul segments will be on Kenyan Airways on angled flat business
class seats. Not the best business class
product in the world, but it made it a much quicker journey than any other
options. The total of 140,000 United
miles were raised from their Chase MileagePlus credit card as well as a
transfer from some more Chase Ultimate Rewards.
I’m sure we will add a few more trips using our companion
pass to domestic locations. We will
probably try to get to Chicago to eat non-stop for a weekend, or someplace
south to warm-up when it is cold (looking at Maui and the Grand Wailea). Visiting family in Wisconsin is also on our
short-list too.
If your New Year’s resolution is to travel more, reach out to us here at PeakAwardBooking.com to get started. We can help you build your points, or use them to the fullest, so that 2020 can be the year you get to see the world!
Few places can match the sheer romance of Europe. There’s a little bit of something for anybody; food, culture, architecture, history and so much more. What better way to celebrate an upcoming anniversary than to visit a few of the iconic European cities?
With Peak Award Booking, not only can we help you get there (and back, if you really want to), but we can get you there in style. This plan includes going a little less extravagant than our previous post (Maldives for Two). Unfortunately, no business class flat-bed seats and no over-water bungalows on the Seine. This time we are saving some points, and seeing as much as we can. Accommodations will still be great, as we will stay in one of the top hotels in the world. Out-of-pocket expense for this trip would be $1,080 whereas retail would be over $7,600. I’ll detail these as we go through the booking and I’ll show a breakdown at the end.
Getting you There
In the past we’ve booked tickets on Qatar QSuites, Singapore business, EVA Royal Laurel Class, Asiana Business Class, Cathay Pacific first class and more of the world’s top products. Today I would like to introduce you to United Economy!
Oops, wrong photo
United’s economy class gives you the opportunity to make new friends as you fight for arm rests. You can also experience new cuisines as you think to yourself “I thought I ordered chicken, what is this?” Plus you can drink all the house beer, wines and soft drinks that the flight attendant can be bothered to bring you (usually two). They offer live entertainment such as games of “What is that smell” and bathroom line potty dance competitions!
The reason we are choosing United is that they offer a ton of award redemption opportunities from almost any city in the US, they have good award rates, don’t pass on fuel surcharges, have lots of European partners on which you can redeem your miles, offer the “Excursionist Perk” and are a partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards giving you lots of ways to earn points.
The Excursionist Perk is a benefit that only United offers. It is basically a free one-way flight, within one region, when you book a round-trip flight. There are a few more rules involved, but we aren’t going to get bogged down in that right now. European examples are almost endless. For example, you could fly from Fargo to Paris (not currently offered as a non-stop), then from Paris to Lisbon, and finally return home from Lisbon for the same amount of points as just a round-trip flight to Europe. If you provide your own transportation in between cities you could really visit a ton of places. Another example is to fly from Appleton, Wisconsin to Venice. From Venice you can take a train to Rome. Then fly from Rome to Brussels (for taxes only). Take another train from Brussels to Paris and then fly to visit your grandson in Colorado Springs. Total number of points needed for the three flights is 60,000 miles and you got to visit four major European cities and watch your grandson for his parents while they are on an African safari. You’ll have to buy train tickets between Venice and Rome as well as Brussels to Paris ($50-$80 each ticket), but if you were to price out the airline tickets for those three legs it may run about $1700 during peak season.
Our anniversary couple for this trip will be flying round-trip from Kansas City (thank you random city generator) and let’s say they want to visit Paris and Vienna during late July and early August of 2020 for a total of 10-14 days. I was able to find an outbound to Paris on July 25th with just one stop in Chicago (five hours, so just enough time to sneak out of the airport and grab some pizza). The overseas leg is an overnight flight, so the plan is to get some sleep and hit the ground running in Paris. After five days in and around Paris, they’ll fly non-stop to Vienna on July 31st. There were five different options, but I chose the mid-day flight to make checking out of the hotel in Paris and into the hotel in Vienna easiest. They will then have five romantic days in Vienna to see and experience all the city has to offer before returning home on the 5th of August. The return flight is just one short stop in Washington DC, and, best of all, the flight is operated by Austrian Airlines instead of United.
Kansas City to Paris, Paris to Vienna and Vienna to Kansas City
ACCOMMODATIONS
Our couple will be splitting their time in Paris between the Hilton Paris Opera for two nights and the Park Hyatt Vendome for three nights.
The Hilton Paris Opera is a beautiful hotel located in the 8th arrondissement, known for its high end shopping and dining. It is also convenient to just about any location in the city either on foot or by metro (there is a station located only 80 meters from the hotel). Both nights at the Hilton Paris Opera will be covered using points and a free night from credit cards. Rates at the Hilton Paris Opera for our dates would be around $385/night (including all taxes), saving them $770!
With our plan they will also be visiting with the highest level of Hilton loyalty status, Diamond. This will grant them access to the executive lounge as well as free breakfast . Upgrades are also a possibility, but unfortunately not very likely during high season.
After two nights at the Hilton, the couple will relocate to the Park Hyatt Vendome. The Park Hyatt Vendome is possibly the ultimate travel hacking hotel. This gorgeous, extravagant and over-the-top hotel is located just a few blocks from The Louvre. Using points you’ll be booked into their lowest level room, but it is still beautifully done. If you happen to know a top tier Hyatt elite, they can even book the room for you as a “Guest of Honor”. This grants you all the benefits of a Hyatt Globalist, which include upgrades and free breakfast (which sounds amazing). During their stay the cheapest cash rate is over $875 per night. Using Hyatt (or Chase Ultimate Reward) points will save the couple $2,627!
The Louvre is just blocks away from the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome
After departing Paris our couple will make their way to Vienna for more culture, food and sights. They will again be utilizing their Hilton points and status at the Hilton Vienna Plaza. This hotel is centrally located within walking distance of the stunning Hofburg Palace, St. Stephen’s Cathedral and many other popular city sites. Upgrades for diamond members are common here, even up to suites. Again, breakfast and executive lounge access are included which provide even more value. The cash rate is really reasonable at around $175/night. Using points will save our anniversary couple a total of about $870 over the five nights.
the details
For the flights you will need 120,000 united miles. Luckily there are a few credit cards to earn these miles. Chase is our go-to issuer for United miles. They offer both the United Explorer credit card as well as the United Business Explorer. For this trip though, we will focus on Chase’s Ultimate Rewards points. These points come from Chase’s own brand of cards; Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve and the Ink Business Preferred. These cards all allow their points to be transferred to several partners, including both United and Hyatt. If you have one of the three “premium” cards, then you can combine your points from any of their fee-free cards to also transfer to partners. These fee-free cards include the Freedom and Freedom Unlimited personal cards and the Ink Cash and Ink Unlimited business cards.
From here on out I will refer to the two people traveling as P1 and P2. The order you apply for cards is somewhat important, and I can provide more details in a personalized plan, just send me a message through our “Contact Us” page. In our example P1 qualifies for business cards based on some part-time tutoring they do on the side. Many people qualify for business cards and don’t know it. Besides the obvious traditional business models things like selling products through marketing programs (Pampered Chef, Rodan + Fields, Herbalife, etc.), driving for Uber, listing your home on Airbnb, and many more will qualify you for a business card.
Airline miles are the most important factor as dates are much more limited for good flights than for hotel awards. P1 will start off with the Sapphire Preferred. Currently chase is offering 60,000 points with $4,000 spend in 3 months ($95 annual fee not waived). Once P1 is close to completing their minimum spend, they will refer P2 to the same card. P2 will earn the same 60,000 points and P1 will get 15,000 for referring them. This will bring their total to at least 143,000 points. They will combine those points into one account and transfer 120,000 points to United to book their flights.
P1 will first apply for the Hilton Aspire (this is a referral link, thank you for supporting the site by using it). This card currently offers 150,000 Hilton points after spending $4,000 in 3 months. It does come with a $450 annual fee, but it carries a number of great benefits including automatic Hilton Diamond status for as long as you hold the card. Hilton Diamond gives you free breakfast at all hotels, 5th night free on award bookings, space available upgrades up to a one-bedroom suite and executive lounge access. The Hilton Aspire also gives you a free weekend night certificate after approval and then an additional free night each year when you pay the annual fee. You will also get a $250 airline incidental fee credit each calendar year (can be used to upgrade your United flights to Economy+) and a $250 resort credit each card member year.
Once P1 has met the spend on their Aspire they can refer P2 to the Hilton Honors Surpass Card. P2 will earn 125,000 points after spending $3,000 in three months, while P1 will earn 15,000 for referring their partner. This will bring their total number of points to at least 308,000 and one free weekend night once we factor in the points earned from their initial spend. This will be more than enough for the five nights in Vienna and the two nights in Paris.
The last card application will be P1 applying for their Chase Ink Business Preferred. They will earn 80,000 points after spending $5,000 in three months. Once combined with the left-over Chase Ultimate Rewards points after booking the United flights they will have at least 108,000 points. They will transfer 90,000 over to Hyatt to book their three night stay at the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome.
Booking
Now the hard part… If you’d like you can leave this up to us here at PeakAwardBooking.com so that we can find you the best routing, with the best connections and the best service. Best of all, there is no fee unless we find you a routing you want. We know some tricks to find the best award flights that may not show up on a simple search through United.com.
We almost always start with booking flights. Often, we will do this even before we have the points for our hotels as we know rooms are almost always available. Once you’ve gotten your dates from the flights, then you can switch gears to book your hotels. (There are rare exceptions to this rule, places like Tahiti or Fiji where hotel availability may dictate your flights.)
As we detailed in the beginning, our couple will be flying from Kansas City to Paris, then on to Vienna before returning home. This can all be done from the united.com multi-city booking tool. Be aware that this tool has its limitations and doesn’t always spit out the best options, especially on complicated itineraries like this. The flights we found carry taxes and fees for a total of $110 per person.
Now that we have their dates, they can book the hotel rooms. Our couple will use the free weekend night certificate earned from the Hilton Honors Aspire Card for Sunday the 26th of July at the Hilton Paris Opera. They can follow this up by booking a single night at the same property for 80,000 points.
The last three nights will be booked using Hyatt points that were transferred from their stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards. 30,000 points a night is very steep for Chase points, but the cost of the hotel gets you great value. 90,000 points saves you about $2,600, a value of 2.8 cents per point! I always shoot for at least 2 cents from Chase, so this is a tremendous value.
For Vienna we will utilize Hilton’s 5th night free benefit for elite members booking award stays. Currently, the five nights will cost 216,000 Hilton points. The couple have about 228,000, so they will have more than enough. The cost of the stay would be $870, giving a value of .4 cents per point. I generally value Hilton points at a little over a half cent each, and we fail to reach that threshold here. If you wanted to, you could book a cash stay and earn points instead of using points. Since this example is all about not spending money, we will burn the points.
the final numbers
This European anniversary trip would cost over $7,600 to book without points and miles. Using miles your cost would be $220 for airline taxes on award flights and $830 in credit card annual fees. You will also have $250 in 2018 and 2019 to reimburse possible economy plus upgrades from your Hilton Aspire Card. Total out of pocket expense (before food, tours, souvenirs, etc.) would be $1,080 resulting in a savings of $6,520!
This is just a specific example of a trip that Peak Award Booking can help you plan and book. We can build you a personalized European anniversary vacation or any other trip you can dream up. We will do the number crunching and searching to get you the absolute best value for your points and miles.
