Frequent Miler on the Air - Earn 8x or redeem with Chase Travel℠ Point Boosts? | Question of the Week Ep4 | 5-24-26

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Earn 8x or redeem with Chase Travel℠ Points Boosts? Frequent Miler reader Bryant wrote in saying...With the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card providing 8X points on travel and hotel, doesn’t it always make sense to book through Chase and get the multiplier? That being said, what then is the best way to utilize the points to maximize their value?We’ve been answering a reader or listener question at the end of each Frequent Miler on the Air podcast episode. Now, we’ve turned the question of the week into its own weekly episode. Tune in every Sunday at 5pm for our Question of the Week podcast. And if you have your own question you’d like to submit, you can send it to [e-mail] in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Chase travel. Earn 8X or redeem with point boosts. Bryant writes in and says, with the Chase Sapphire Reserve providing 8X points on travel and hotels, that's booked through the Chase Travel portal, we should say, doesn't it always make sense to book through the Chase Sapphire? travel portal and get the multiplier? That being said, when is the best way to utilize the points to maximize their value? Yeah. So Bryant was asking this in the context of a post about points boosts with Chase where you can get sometimes up to two cents per point value and some rare cases. They've been offering specials where you can get 2.5 cents per point value from your points,

redeeming Chase points. But Bryant is looking at this. and saying, well, any travel I book through Chase Travel, if I pay with my credit card, I'll earn 8X. And so isn't that a better deal? And, you know, he kind of threw me for a loop here because I had to really think about this. It's a tough one, because if you're going to book through Chase Travel anyway, you're comfortable doing that,

maybe you found the prices are close enough to what you could get elsewhere, then why not earn 8X when that opportunity is available? And as I thought more about it, I think the answer really has to do with where you are in your point earning and spending journey. If you already have a big pile of chase points, you need to kind of be deprioritizing earning more points and looking for opportunities to spend them for good value. And I wouldn't be looking for where can I spend them to get eight cents per point value to match that 8x number on the other. other side, those are not equivalent numbers. One is about a good earning rate. 8x is a good earning rate, but the other is about what's a good redemption rate. And so if you can get, I think really more than 1.5 cents per point with your chase points, then it's a time to consider

spending them rather than earning them. And whether you decide to or not again, I think is really based on how big is your point stash? If you have so many points that you don't know when you're going to use them all up, then keep spending them whenever you find good value. If you're like, I don't know if I have enough for the next major high value redemption opportunity that comes along, then yeah, earning is probably a thing you want to do. Yeah, and it probably depends on how you anticipate redeeming, if not via that points boost. You know, for instance, if you're somebody who primarily likes to use your points for premium cap and international travel, you'll very frequently get more than two cents per point in value from those types of redemptions. So you might say, well,

I would rather use my points for those situations to fly business class to Europe or first class to Asia or whatever it might be because those experiences are farther out of reach with cash than perhaps whatever other things you're booking through the portal. So you might look at what your regular redemption patterns are and say, okay, well, is is 1.75 cents per point competitive with what else I would do with the points? Or is it better than what I'm likely to do with the points otherwise? Then I should definitely be considering redeeming. And I think Greg's point is really good in that, you know, if you have an opportunity to use points to solid value, it's certainly worth considering that. your points aren't likely to become much more valuable over time. They don't appreciate in value the way that

cash does if you haven't invested or in a high yield account. And so I would rather keep the cash in pocket if I'm getting good value for my points. But what good value is varies from person to person. I do want to drill in a little bit to one thing that Greg mentioned at the beginning when he said, you know, if you're comfortable booking via Chase travel. And I think that that's something that you should certainly consider Bryant before you go booking everything through Chase Travel. There are some caveats there. I mean, first of all, there are some downsides to booking through a credit card portal. For instance, if you're booking flights and something goes wrong with your flight, you're generally going to have to call Chase Travel in order to get that fixed. The carrier itself might not be willing to help you

when things go wrong, when there's scheduled changes and things of that nature. Similarly, if your flight gets canceled and you get a flight credit, you might have to call Chase Travel in order to use it. So there's some potential downside there. When you look at hotels, you may not earn hotel points or hotel elite credit or get your hotel elite benefits. Now, I say may not because there are some hotels where you can get those things when you're booking through Chase Travel. So it does vary and you do need to kind of look into the details there. But I look at the 8X through Chase Travel as being sort of an additional 4X on flights and hotels anyway, because flights and hotels, the Sapphire Reserve earns 4x when I book directly. So if I'm going to book through

Chase Travel, it's really to get an additional four points per dollar over what I could earn just booking the hotel directly. And so then I have to ask myself, okay, is it worth giving up whatever hotel perks there might be potentially booking through Chase Travel? And then does Chase Travel have the best price? Because number one, they just might not have the same price you can get elsewhere, just period, looking through other hotel booking platforms, but you may also have access to other rates that could be slightly better. If you have a AAA membership or you're going to a conference and there's a conference rate for the hotel you're staying at, you're not going to be able to take advantage of those things when you book through Chase Travel. So if you're

paying a slightly inflated price through Chase Travel, that kind of decreases the value of those additional four points per dollar versus paying directly. So you do need to kind of look at that when you're comparing, it's not quite as simple as, okay, I can earn eight points or I can redeem them. There's some additional complication there, I should say. And then beyond all that, of course, also you have opportunities to book hotels by clicking through portals in some cases. You might be able to click through Racketon or Capital One shopping and earn eight points per dollar, or 10 points per dollar on booking an IHG or Marriott or Choice property. It depends on what you're booking and where you're booking, and you're not going to get those returns on flights necessarily.

So there are a lot of variables, but that stuff would come into play if I'm asking myself, should I be earning on this day or should I be redeeming? My first question would be, does it even make sense to book this through Chase Travel versus my other options? And then I might still have to consider all of the things that Greg said and say, okay, well, does it make sense to click through Rakuten and is there a card-linked offer for this hotel? And what would I earn through the hotel program if I book directly versus the redeeming?

I'm still going to do all the calculus that Greg just mentioned. But I wanted to mention that because I think it's important to do a little bit of comparison shopping to determine whether that aid acts is even a deal for your situation. That's a really great points, Nick, that you made there. And so there you go, Bryant. If you thought it was confusing before, now we've made it much more so for you. True story. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder.

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