Chase Sapphire Preferred Refresh Makes The Card Much Better — But Hyatt Transfers Get 25% Worse

Chase is updating the Sapphire Preferred card on June 15. This is mostly a strong improvement, but there are some caveats.

Sapphire Preferred was once the ‘it’ card in mileage circles. I was genuinely excited to use mine for the first time 15 years ago. Earning double points on travel and dining was cool back then, and the points were transferrable!

Since then there have been some modest changes, but a lot of new competitors, and it makes sense for Chase to look at how the card – which still, surprisingly, has just a $95 annual fee – can still drive value. The annual fee isn’t changing. Here’s what is:

• Better points-earning: The card currently earns 3x on dining, streaming, and online grocery; 2x on all travel (but 5x if booked through Chase Travel); plus 5x on Lyft and Peleton. They are adding 3x on gas stations and EV charging, and 3x on vacation homes at Airbnb/Vrbo and other top platforms.
  • Improved hotel credit: The existing $50 Chase Travel hotel credit is increasing from $50 to $100 each anniversary year. There’s stll no night minimum. So you can easily book just a one-night room through Chase Travel to offset the card’s $95 annual fee.

    And existing cardmembers get the incremental value if they’ve already spent the $50 credit, too.

  • Global Entry/Precheck benefit: They are adding up to $120 every four years on Global Entry, Precheck, or Nexus.

  • More travel protections: Nothing is being taken away here and they are adding emergency evacuation coverage. Here’s how Chase describes the new benefit:

    With the addition of Emergency Evacuation and Transportation coverage, if a covered traveler is injured or becomes sick during a trip 100 miles or more from home that results in emergency evacuation, they can be covered for medical services and transportation up to $100,000. In the case of death of a covered traveler, eligible expenses incurred are covered up to $15,000 to return remains to the country of their primary residence. Covered travelers include the cardmember and the cardmember’s immediate family members, including a spouse or domestic partner and legally dependent children under 26.

  • Free AppleTV subscription: for one year, with activation required by end of 2026.

  

  Here are the two givebacks, and one of them is a doozy. They are eliminating the card’s 10% anniversary bonus for points earned from spending. Existing cardmembers will earn that through October 1, 2026 and then customers receive their lump sum anniversary bonus payout in January 2027. New cardmembers from June 15 oneward will not earn an anniversary bonus at all.

  But here’s the big one. For Chase Sapphire Preferred as well as Ink Business Preferred and legacy Ink Plus (and Corporate Flex), points transfers to Hyatt will no longer be 1:1. Instead, they’ll be 4:3.

  For Sapphire Preferred this is immediate for new cardmembers who start with the card June 15, and goes into effect for existing cardmembers October 1. For Ink Business Preferred cardmembers, this is goes into effect October 1, 2026 for both for existing and new cardmembers.

  • Hyatt has been one of the real unique values of the Chase Ultimate Rewards program. While United is a bigger transfer partner in volume overall for Chase, Hyatt has offered real value but charges the most for points.

  • So I take this as ‘with this refresh we’re giving you more points, but the most expensive redemption breaks the model when we don’t have Sapphire Reserve’s high annual fee to make the economics work.

  • Hyatt’s big devaluation changes the consumer value calculation somewhat, and remember that Hyatt says they were going easy on assigning hotel dates to the new 5 levels per category award chart this year – so next year should be worse.

  • On the other hand, it seems like with lower redemption costs per point for Hyatt, they should be able to work out a points price that allows for 1:1 transfers from their cobrand card partner. This change may mean fewer transfers to Hyatt, which means less revenue for Hyatt!

    Hyatt and Chase just did a contract extension that pays Hyatt more, but Hyatt gets a lot out of it too – they’ve become really focal for Chase’s premium customers as a result of these transfers, so less than 1:1 and fewer transfers actually hurts Hyatt not just on direct revenue for the points, but in terms of customers being introduced to and experiencing Hyatts.

• It’s striking that Chase dropped Emirates as a transfer partner rather than move them to less than 1:1 like other issuers did, maintaining their 1:1 anchor with all transfer partners… and then proceeded to devalue Hyatt transfers for Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred customers.

It’s important to note that the Hyatt transfers devaluation does not apply to Sapphire Reserve cardmembers (or Sapphire Reserve for Business, or JP Morgan Reserve cardmembers). And cardmembers will earn more points that for some will offset this.

Overall the Sapphire Preferred card’s faster earning, better hotel credit, and leaning further into travel protections is a good thing and makes the card that was the ‘it’ product among rewards card aficionados 15 years ago once again more competitive. But the loss of Hyatt transfers at 1:1 stings a bit. For people staying in Airbnbs I’d rate this a net positive.

I was surprised to see the addition on 3x on major short-term rental platforms, because they stopped bonusing the ‘other travel’ category entirely with Sapphire Reserve last year – Airbnb and cruises, mostly – in a push to reward booking those kinds of trips through Chase Travel rather than incentivizing spend through its competitors. This is potentially lucrative for many (and it is possible now to hold both a Sapphire Preferred and a Sapphire Reserve, there are some who may wish to do this for 3x on Airbnb).

If you’re tempted to jump on Sapphire Preferred now (i.e. before June 15) in order to have 1:1 Hyatt transfers for a few months, and the 10% earning bonus, consider that when new cards or released or products are refreshed there’s frequently an elevated offer for the card so that may be coming in a few days.