Why The Chase Sapphire Preferred Is My Favorite Credit Card For Ultra-Low Budget Travel

In full transparency, I didn’t get the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card until about halfway through my trip. I originally had the Chase Sapphire Reserve® but downgraded to the Preferred after a year because I wasn’t using the premium features enough to justify the annual fee.

But both cards have similar features and operate within the Chase Ultimate Rewards® ecosystem, so the features I’ll explain below apply to both. For most travelers, though, I would recommend starting with the Preferred—you get most of the same basic benefits but with a much lower annual fee.

Here’s why Chase’s travel cards are my favorite:

Chase Transfer Partners

Chase has 11 airline transfer partners, including both domestic and international airlines, and three hotel transfer partners. Although Chase doesn’t have the highest number of transfer partners among the major credit card rewards programs (American Express, Chase, Capital One and Citi), its collection of partner airlines is wide enough that you can find decent award bookings to most parts of the world if you know how to search for them.

Chase really shines with one transfer partner in particular: World of Hyatt, the loyalty program of Hyatt hotels. Among the major credit card reward programs listed above, Chase is the only one that can transfer to Hyatt. The Bilt World Elite Mastercard® also transfers to Hyatt, but that card is a bit more niche and not part of any of the above credit card ecosystems. When you’re trying to spend as few points as possible, Hyatt points are hands down the best way to get good value out of hotel redemptions. Award nights for Hyatt Category 1 properties start at 3,500 points per night. That’s far lower than what you’ll typically find with other major hotel loyalty programs (Hilton, Marriott and IHG), even for rooms with similar cash prices.

There’s a good selection of Category 1 hotels across the world and the hotels themselves are high-quality—often retailing for over $100 a night. Some of my favorites include the Story Hotel Studio Malmo and the Lindner Hotel Antwerp.

The Chase Travel℠ Portal

For most credit card travel portals, your points have a fixed value when used to book travel through the portal—usually one cent. In cases where the portal value is the same as what you can get for redeeming your points for cash back, there’s no point in bothering with it if you’re planning to use points for the booking. Just book directly with the hotel or airline and reimburse yourself with cash back if you can’t find a better use for the points.

The Chase Travel portal is different. Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1.5 cents apiece when redeemed through Chase for Reserve cardholders and 1.25 cents apiece for Preferred cardholders. Yes, that value is lower than what you can get with a good award flight or award night redemption through a transfer partner, which is why some points and miles experts snub the portal. But like I mentioned previously, finding opportunities to actually use transfer partners effectively as a low-budget traveler can be hard when the cash alternatives are often cheaper.

The Chase Travel portal lets you access some of those low-priced options—mainly accommodations—that you can’t book through a traditional loyalty program. I’ve been able to book hostels and budget hotels through the portal and get decent value for my points this way.

The Option for Cash Back

Redeeming travel rewards points for cash back might seem like a waste to many travel rewards enthusiasts. But sometimes it’s cheaper to book travel with cash and reimburse yourself with cash back rather than trying to redeem your points through a portal or loyalty program. If I have to choose between redeeming 10,000 points for one award night at a hotel or $100 in cash back I can spend on five nights at a $20 hostel, I’ll choose the option that lets me travel for longer—even if the cents-per-point value of the latter is technically worse.

Chase makes it easy to do that and still use points, offering both direct cash back and statement credits at a fixed 1 cent per point value. You can easily liquidate your points for cash at any time without any hoops to jump through. Some other travel rewards programs either give terrible cash-back redemption rates—like the American Express® Gold Card (Terms apply, see rates & fees), which lets you redeem for statement credits at 0.6 cents per point. Others only give you a decent rate when redeeming your points as a statement credit against specific purchases —like the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card (rates & fees), which lets you redeem for statement credit against travel purchases at 1 cent per mile but only gives 0.5 cents per mile for direct cash back.

I personally haven’t redeemed my Ultimate Rewards points for cash back yet because I still have enough cash to pay for purchases directly, and I prefer to keep my points in their original state for maximum flexibility. But if the day comes when I run out of cash, my Chase points will be there waiting for me.