Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase Points Boosts explained & evaluated | Coffee Break Ep61 | 7-1-25

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

What are "Chase points boosts"? In this episode, we'll explain and evaluate this new system for establishing the value of Chase Travel ℠ bookings.(00:21) - Explaining a few confusing elementsLearn more about this here.(03:30) - Chase points boosts (flights)(04:50) - What does a points boost mean for flights?(09:19) - As far as flights are concerned, is this a good change?(13:59) - Chase points boosts (hotels)(14:08) - The Edit hotels(18:41) - As far as hotels are concerned, is this a good change?Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a VoyEscape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to frequent milers coffee break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. On today's coffee break with frequent Myler chase points boosts explained and evaluated we're gonna talk all about the chase points boost today in the past it was very simple chase had a pretty simple system

depending on which card you had you got either 1.25 cents per point or 1.5 cents per point when booking travel through chase travel. However, that's changed and it's no longer so simple. Now the base rate is going to be one cent per point standard, but there are points boosts and you can get up to two cents per point depending on which card you have with the points boosts. Now, if you're an existing card holder prior to June 23rd of 2025 you're gonna get the best of both worlds for a while it's a little confusing we've got more detail

in a post the points you earn before October 26th of this year will work at the old rates for a while it gets very confusing so you'll see the linked post in the show description for more information about that but the bottom line to know is that if you had either a Sapphire preferred or Sapphire Reserve or an Inc business preferred before June 23rd, you're going to have a base level of your old rate of 1.25 or 1.5 cents per point and your existing points for a while. And you'll also see the points boost that we're going to talk about. But if you're a new card holder if

you've opened one of those cards since June twenty third then all you're going to see are either one cent per point or points boosts so we're going to talk more about what those are how they work and whether or not they're a good deal. Yeah and uh the other sort of big picture thing to know is that points boosts are only for flights and hotels. So, you know, if you're hoping to book a cruise or a train or something like that through chase travel, hopefully you're grandfathered into the old point, the old system, because with the new system,

you'd only get one cent per point value. believe me you don't want to do that. But some other way if if that's your situation. Well, I think I think you should explain why because so if you let's say you had a cruise you wanted to book you could use your Sapphire Reserve card like let's say your cruise is a thousand dollars. So rather than using 100,000 points at one cent per point through chase travel, instead just cash out those points at one cent each and then use a card. Not yourself. I reserve use a card that offers three acts on travel like your ink business preferred to buy that cruise and you'll earn 3000 points because you'll learn three acts on travel with the ink business preferred.

Then just pay yourself back by cashing out 100,000 points to your checking account for a thousand bucks in order to pay your credit card bill. And you could earn points on the cruise rather than just using your points. So you don't wanna use your points at one cent per point. There's no reason to do that. You'd better off using a card that bonuses travel

and just cashing out your points if that's what you wanna do. Yeah, and if the cruise is available through the Chase travel portal at a good price, then use your Sapphire Reserve through the travel portal to pay for the flight, and you'll get eight points per dollar if you're in the new system. Okay. So with that said, let's talk first about flights, and we'll talk about what those points boosts are all about when you're booking flights. Then we'll talk separately about hotels. with where when you're searching for flights, some of the search results will show that

a points boost is available for those flights. And it's limited to whatever airlines Chase has in their rotation at the time. They tell us that that's going to change over time. But right now it's airlines like United, Air Canada, Emirates, Qantas, Singapore, and more, whatever and more means. They also listed Southwest as one when they told us, but I have yet to see a single Southwest flight boosted. So TBD about Southwest. Now, just because an airline is included in points boost doesn't mean that all of the flights that you see in your search results from that airline will be boosted. With United, I found most flights are boosted, but with the others, I could only find like

a few here and there that were boosted. All right, let's talk about what boosts mean now. So let's say you're searching for a particular flight and it is boosted. What it means is if it's an economy flight and you have the Sapphire Reserve Card, you'll, the boost will be 1.5X, meaning you'll get 1.5 cents per point value for that flight. If you have the Sapphire Preferred or Inc. Preferred, it's 1.5 cents per point value for that flight. If you have the Sapphire preferred or Inc. preferred, it's 1.25.

So if you've been following along, you'll see that you're only getting the old boosted rates, the old sort of standard chase travel rates when a flight is boosted if you're booking economy. So in other words, you're not going to find like vastly outsized value for economy flights on chase travel. And you'll only get like the old rate when the boosts are available. Things get a little bit more interesting though, when you start looking at premium premium cabins. So even like things like Comfort Plus, different airlines call them different things, but that level of economy that's like they sell for a little bit more, or premium economy, which is the usually on international flights where you have a leg rest and more recline. Either one of those, if it shows up as boosted, you're looking at a 1.75x

boost with the Sapphire Reserve or 1.5x with the Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred. So suddenly it's getting interesting. Your points are getting worth more than they could have been worth before. And then things get really interesting with business and first-class flights because there you're looking at 2x boosts with the Sapphire Reserve and 1.75x with the preferred and ink preferred. Yeah, so two cents per point. Of course, keep in mind that that's on boosted flights. It's not on all business and first class flights, so it's not going to be everything, but when it is available, that could create good opportunities because there could very well be situations where it makes more sense to book a paid business or first class ticket through chase travel than it does to book an award ticket and award ticket might cost even more miles.

And in fact, we typically find United miles, for instance, to be worth, I don't know, somewhere around one point three cents per mile. Right. I can't remember our exact RV for it, but 2 cents is better than typical for United miles. So probably there'll be a lot of situations where you'll find. Boosted United flights that are a better deal through chase travel than they would be booking as an award, so it's worth taking a look and then of course you learn miles on the flight and status progress towards status, all the rest of that.

So that's interesting, I think, right? Are the prices the same as what you'll find elsewhere though? Mostly, mostly. That's a good news. When I initially did a comparison, it looked like economy flights were a little more expensive than I could find on Google flights, for example, but premium economy and business class were the exact same price. More recent searches I've done, that discrepancy is no longer there.

However, there's weird stuff happening. And I feel like they had just rolled out points boost recently, and I think they're still working on it. Because like one of the things I noticed is that on, when I filtered to just boosted flights, um, as of this morning, there were no basic economy options at all. Um, so regular economy matched what I could find through Google flights, but basic economy just wasn't even available to pick. I know that wasn't true before. I know I saw basic economy as an option before.

So whether it's coming back or not, I don't know at the time we're recording this. The other thing to know is chase travel doesn't have most low cost airlines available. So if you're looking for those really cheap flights like on Spirit or Ryanair kind of things, you're not going to find those flights or those prices. Major airlines though, prices, as far as I could tell, usually match. The only time I've seen an exception was when what Google Flights found was some weird package deal through some website I've never heard of, but booking through through the major airline showed the same prices chase travel. Yeah, you know, this is kind of interesting to me. So I mean, what do you think?

Considering all that prices are generally about the same as what you'll find elsewhere. And there are situations where you'll get more value out of your points than you used to. So I mean, is this a good thing or is it bad because you're not getting what you used to get? Yeah, there's both is the answer. What I like is the fun of finding things like there are times where especially on short domestic flights where first class is not that much more expensive than economy. And in those cases, because the boosts are higher for first class or premium economy, whichever you're looking at, it can be cheaper in points to book the higher level cabin than economy. And so that's kind of

fun. Like, you know, it feels like if you, if you stumble upon those situations, it feels like you're getting a higher level cabin for free or maybe even save, save points by booking that higher level cabin. And so enjoy your trip more and save points. That's a winning combination. So, you know, that's fun. The possibility of finding outsize value, like, you know, looking for a big international trip and you find that there's a great deal in cash for, you know, maybe a business class

flight, you know, in the past, the best we could do is 1.5 cents per point value when booking that. Now, now we can potentially get two cents per point per value. So there's, there are gems of opportunity out there now that weren't there before. That's the good news. The bad news is there's no way to know when you're gonna find that. And so it's, it's gonna be, it's frustrating.

I'm finding it frustrating. I wanted to find, I wanted to find these points boosts for like the JetBlue promo. Could I fly to Europe on JetBlue Mint and get 2X value booking it through Chase? But no, there's no points boost for JetBlue yet. Same thing with that Turkish promo that's out at this time. I briefly thought about doing that. No points boost for Turkish flights.

So, it's frustrating in real in real life. So hypothetically, it's fun. You know, there's all this like hypothetical value out there, and some people will find that. But I'm finding so far more frustration than value. You know, I'm really curious. I feel like there has to be some AI under the hood here going on, like trying to predict what will motivate your behavior to book something or to book something different than what fits your normal patterns or whatever. There has to be some studying going on of the data, I would think. And long term, I would think that you're going to see different boosts depending on like you might see different boosts than I would. I would bet

maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm maybe that's the conspiracy theorist in me, but I would think it seems like they'd have the ability to collect a lot of data on what seems to motivate you to book something and then have the opportunity to kind of push that and so you know, I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. We could debate that, but I could see that coming into play over time. We'll see. I mean, this is early and we don't know how many more airlines we

might see or might not see. So I think it'll really vary, but I could see there being situations where perhaps they're able to push you to certain things that are more beneficial one way or another for the travel portal or the airlines that they're trying to. Yeah, maybe. My guess is that it's much simpler than that. My guess is they have contracts, deals with various travel providers, various airlines and hotels, and the size of their discount is, Chase's discount sort of dictates whether or not they can do this points boost. And I think they get more of a break on the cost of, you know, first class flights than they do for economy. And they probably do though. One would think that if they're able to push certain volume levels that they might be able to dictate that more. Who knows? Well, it's totally possible and I think you're right as far as whether or not they're doing

it today, there's a lot more upside for them if they do get into sort of an AI system of picking that. We'll see. We'll see. So yeah, I agree with you though. Overall, it seems kind of frustrating more than anything else. I'm not wildly excited, but now and then I'm sure I'll put it to use on a United flight. Probably. Let's talk about hotels because I think the hotel side is potentially more interesting to me,

whether or not it is to everybody else. I guess that you'll that'll be an individual thing. But this is more exciting to me because you have a few different options with hotels. First up, you got the edit, which is only available to those with Sapphire Reserve cards, either the consumer or the business Sapphire Reserve. So the edit is like Chase's version of find hotels and resorts, where you'll get breakfast for two and potential upgrade

and something like $100 resort credit. Varies a little bit property to property, but those properties under the edit in that program are all supposed to be 2X, 2X value, 2 cents per point. And we found some bugs in the system. There's been a property or two that wasn't displaying properly, wasn't boosted properly. And so far, they've been pretty responsive in terms of fixing that. So hopefully, as those bugs are found, they'll continue to fix those things. And overall, there are far fewer properties under the edit than there are

under fine hotels and resorts. So if you're comparing to Amex Platinum Card and fine hotels and resorts, you'll find way more properties under FHR. Although anecdotally, I think it just depends on where you're traveling because like, for instance, New York, I think the edit has more properties in New York or at least a greater variety than fine hotels and resorts does whereas like Abu Dhabi I think the edit had one and fine hotels resorts had

like a dozen or something so it's going to vary depending on where you're going but if you have a Sapphire Reserve you'll want to check that out because you get two cents per point in all bookings through the edit other hotels are going to be 1.75 cents per point with the Sapphire Reserve when they're boosted or one and a half cents per point if you got a Sapphire Preferred or an Inc. Business Preferred. Now again that's when they're boosted. Not all hotels are boosted though they're quite a lot. I mean in the my searches anyway there have been quite a few that

have been boosted to those rates. So you know that's that's potentially good news because you can get decent value. I mean a reasonable redemption value for Hyatt points is 1.8 cents per point. People are pretty excited about Hyatt points at that value. So in places where you can get 1.75 cents per point I think that'll probably be interesting for a lot of people if prices are equal. Are they? No prices are not equal. Sometimes they're equal, I guess is what I really should say is often the prices are inflated, but not always. I've looked at I haven't done a big scientific study of this yet, but where I've looked at prices and

compared them, I did two different things. Initially I looked at prices through Chase Travel, specifically of the edit hotels, and looked at, compared that to prices when booking directly. And when I looked at that way, the prices usually were worse, but not always. And usually they were like 5%, 8% worse, like not like way, way worse. But there are cases where it's way, way worse. So separately, I looked at points boosted hotels, not just the edit hotels, but point boosted in general. And I was curious whether the chase travel portal was inflating prices over other online travel agencies.

So I compared to hotels.com and there I found that three fourths of the hotels that I looked at, the price was exactly the same. That was the good news. But one fourth, they were randomly like higher prices. And I don't know, I don't know how you know, that's being decided when when they want to jack up prices. So I don't know how that's being decided when they want to jack

up prices. My guess is that's where the AI is coming in neck that the AI is predicting that I really want to book this particular hotel. So jack up the price for that one. That's at least what my experience has felt like since trying to do this. Yeah, there's good news that we haven't mentioned yet, which is that a lot of hotels bookable through Chase travel allow you to earn hotel points and elite status when booking through Chase.

So normally when you book through something like hotels.com, that's not an option, you know. But on Chase Travel, it'll actually show you that like point that the stay is eligible for hotel benefit, hotel point earnings. So that's good. That might not always work exactly as you hope, but that's because it said it,

you'd have recourse to follow up and get and get that working. Yeah. All right. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? I guess I'll start on that. I am interested. I'm intrigued by this, because I think there are opportunities to do well, particularly in I know, probably most people like the fine hotels and resorts edit type thing for boutique hotels, but I like to take advantage of that for chain hotels so I can collect elite credit and and get my elite benefits. So I'm kind of excited about this because I've seen quite a few chain hotels

under the edit and at 2 cents per point. That's a pretty good return. I mean, I anecdotally looked in New York City and I saw a Hyatt property that is a category eight, normally 40 or 45,000 points per night. That chat wall chat wall. I don't know how you say the name of that particular property, but I haven't stayed there before because it's usually 40 or 45,000 points per night. And that's just a little bit more than I really want to spend in New York.

And I saw it through the edit for thirty three thousand points because cash rates supported that where that was two cents per point. So it cost me fewer points to book through the edit than if I transferred to Hyatt and I would end up getting a hundred dollar resort credit breakfast for two, which I would get from as part of my globalist benefits anyway. But if you're not a globalist, that's the way to book that property rather than transferring to Hyatt, because also in that case, it says you'd get all of your hotel benefits and elite night credit and hotel points.

And so you'd earn points on that, too, you know, beyond the fact that you would use fewer points, you'd earn points on it. So there are plenty of times like that where I'm going to be actually pretty happy to use the edit now That's gonna vary though person to person I happen to go to New York a couple of times a year and not everybody does and So it depends on where you're going because the edit does have far less coverage than some other premium travel booking platforms But there are situations where I think that two cents per point is gonna be very good and where I think one point seven five cents

Per point frankly is gonna be good for a lot of people. On the flip side, what I hate about this is the extra comparison shopping I have to do to make sure that I'm still getting a good deal. I looked at a different property where the nightly rate through the edit or through chase, whatever it was, was like $125 a night more than if I just booked it in the Marriott app under the member rate. And so, you know, like that very quickly erodes the savings. And then also it means I have to bust out the calculator and see, OK, Chase is saying

I'm getting two cents per point, but really the nightly rate's $125 less. So compared to that nightly rate, how many points am I using and what I'm in that specific instance it was like 1.63 cents per point, which you might still be happy with. That's better than one and a half but it's not really two and so you're gonna kind of have to bust out the calculator now and then to make sure that you're still getting a good deal and that kind of annoys me it's extra effort extra work whereas the old system was very simple so i don't love that but i do love the opportunity to get outsize value and personally i wasn't using chase travel at one and a half cents per point very much before so i'm kind of excited about the opportunity to get outsize value and personally I wasn't using chase travel at one and a half cents per point very much before so I'm kind of excited about the opportunity to get some

farther outsize value because I'd be much more likely at two cents to use it than I was at 1.5 but I think for the average person overall this is probably not great. Yeah maybe although it just depends on your I think your booking preferences. I do like the aspect of booking boutique hotels. I love that. So, you know, I've been excited. Citi, for example, Citi Thank You Rewards has gone into the ability to book high-end hotels

at good value by adding the ability to transfer points to leading hotels of the world, and you could get something like 1.6 cents per point value that way. The ability to book to transfer points to preferred hotels at a one to four ratio, which gives some amazing opportunities that way. But neither of those chains, for lack of a better word, collections of hotels have all that many properties. And so I'm often going places

where I wanna book something nice, but more boutiquey, but it's not available through either of those options. And none of the big chains are available. This gives me another place to turn to. And I have seen in some really like New England, Martha's Vineyard, places like that where the edit hotels do show up even though there's no chains there. So things like that make it exciting to me, especially in the situations when the prices are reasonable compared to what I could book elsewhere.

Cause as long as it's close, like if it's within five, 10% then probably the, the a hundred dollar property credit and the, and the, you know, free breakfast or whatever, whatever perks I'm getting through booking through that way makeup for that. And so I'd be getting close to the full two cents per point value. And then also, the Sapphire Reserve card now has these credits for booking cash rates through the edit. As long as you do a two night or longer stay and you get $250 back per six months. So the way I'm looking at it, I think this should work

is if I find a good deal for a hotel I wanna stay at for booking with points, I should be able to, Chase Travel lets you when you're checking out say, how much of it do you want to book with points? And I wanna say, I'm gonna book everything with points except for $250 worth. And then I'll use my Sapphire Reserve card to pay the $250, and I should get that credited back once every six months if I do that regularly. I find that pretty exciting. For those who are grandfathered into the old Sapphire Reserve stuff for a while though, keep in mind those coupons do not take effect until October 26 of this year

of 2025. So for me, I've got to wait till then. But I find that pretty exciting. So overall with the hotel thing, just like you, I wasn't using the 1.5 before. So to me, it's all upside. There's more opportunity now than there was before. Yep. But if you were somebody who was frequently using one and a half cents per point before, then I think it's shakier.

Although the 1.75 anecdotally, I've found quite a lot of 1.75 cents per point. So on the hotel side, you might actually be happy enough with this on the flight side. I think that it's it's a loss for anybody who was using their points at one and a half cents per point overall. But again for as if you were somebody who is like I value my chase points more than that I wasn't using them at one and a half cents per point then like Greg said I think this does become all upside and so I think for that crowd. It's all upside and for a lot of people

It's a lot of downside. It just depends on where you fall. Yeah. All right. So big picture overall with points boosts. Good news for United Flyers, good news for sort of luxury hotel stayers, not good news for people who want to book other types of travel. But so I'd say on average, there's more bad news than good, but there is some good news in there for people searching for those diamond and rough opportunities. There's more upside possible, just harder to find than there was before. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list.

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