Chase’s new “Points Boost” feature on their premium credit cards looks a lot better than I thought it would. It’s available now for all Sapphire Reserve cardmembers, even though the rest of the card proposition’s changes don’t come into effect until October for those of us who already had their cards in our wallets.

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® (See rates and fees) earn 100,000 bonus points + $500 Chase Travel credit after $5,000 in purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

• Sapphire Reserve for Business^SM (See rates and fees) earn 200,000 bonus points after you spend $30,000 on purchases in your first 6 months from account opening.

Points Boost is meant to take the place of fixed value per point redemptions through their portal. I usually transfer my points to airline and hotel programs, and you can still do that. Sapphire Reserve let you redeem at 1.5 cents apiece for paid travel, but that wasn’t enough value for me to part with my points and I didn’t like booking through a third party – too much hassle in my view.

• Now the value using points that way will be 1 cent
  
• But there are better options on some flights and hotels
  
• And those options can get up to 2 cents – 1/3 better than before, but not all the time – with Reserve.

Chase Sapphire Reserve® gets a better deal on Points Boost than Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred, which is not surprising. It’s the premium card product, and already had a stronger value spending points directly through the Chase portal. Assume you’re getting a quarter of a cent less per point with those other cards, which was the gap with the old fixed redemption value too.

The Best Hotel Options Offer Points Boost All The Time

For Sapphire Reserve, The Edit hotels gets 2x across the board, while other available hotels boost to 1.75x. The Edit properties represent incredible value for several reasons.

• Extra benefits for booking them through Chase, like upgrades and property credit
  
• Twice annual $250 statement credit when booking stays of two nights or longer
  
• Double dip with hotel loyalty program points, elite stay credit, and on-property elite benefits.

Redeeming at two cents per point, getting hotel points and property credits and statement credits is incredible value at these roughly 1,100 properties. That’s going to work for you if you regularly stay at higher-end hotels. You’re going to find many properties in major world cities.

Be careful to compare prices, though, because Chase’s travel portal may show higher (or sometimes lower!) rates than you’ll find booking direct. That was always true, when the value proposition was redeeming at a straight 1.5x and it’s true booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts as well. Chase told me they weren’t intentionally marking up prices to cover the economics of the offer.

Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred don’t have access to The Edit, so hotel availability for boosted redemptions will be far more limited.

Which Airlines Are Offering Points Boost

Chase told me prior to launch that the airlines participating in Points Boost would look familiar – a subset of their partners. And we’re seeing flights from United, Air Canada, Emirates, Qantas and Singapore Airlines. United flights seem to have availability most of the time. The list of airlines are supposed to vary.

• United may be offering a good deal with Chase whenever the flights aren’t expected to sell out completely.
  
• Either other airlines are being more conservative with their inventory, or else Chase just paid a lot more to United to get this access – knowing that United will offer familiar options to the bulk of their customers and that would make Points Boost look useful rather than niche.

It’s not at all surprising that the greatest inventory for Points Boost flights is coming from United. They are Chase’s biggest co-brand credit card partner, and the single largest points transfer partner by several orders of magnitude.

I actually think the best opportunity here as an airline is for Air Canada to liquidate premium cabin inventory through Chase. They’re discounting, but not as much as with award travel necessarily. And they’re doing it for customers who wouldn’t otherwise be buying Air Canada tickets.

• For Americans, who are the primary holder of Chase points, these are necessarily connecting itineraries when flying through Canada. That means these are customers with many similar options (and sometimes more direct options). They are incremental customers to Air Canada, while someone redeeming for United is likely to be in a hub (Chase hardholders will be in the New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago and similar markets!). The same holds for Emirates redeeming for one of their non-stop flights.

• An important Air Canada corporate strategy has been moving the needle a few percentage points on the traffic carried over Canada between the U.S. and Europe. This is true incremental business, and incentivized Chase bookings serve this end directly.

How Much Points Boost Is Worth

For Chase Sapphire Reserve®, you’ll get stronger Points Boost value in premium cabins.

• 1.5x for coach
  
• 1.75x for premium economy
  
• 2x for business and first class

Who Wins And Who Loses

You’re not going to get Points Boost for anything other than flights and hotels, and you won’t always get Points Boost (though you should still search for these opportunities, and you may want to shift your travel to take advantage of them). If you were using 1.5x redemptions for cruises or car rentals you’re losing that opportunity with the program change, at least until existing point balances lose the grandfathered benefit in a couple of years.

Points Boost is only worth 1.5 cents per point for coach redemptions, and isn’t going to be available all the time.

I never found Chase Travel worthwhile at 1.5 cents per point because you had to book through Chase Travel and travel portals are just challenging dealing with customer service on any changes. Even where competent, things just take more time than dealing with an airline directly. Plus, I always aim to get better value out of my points.

However coach travelers aren’t often going to get more than 1.5 cents per point out of their miles when redeeming through an airline loyalty program anyway. For them, redeeming through the Chase portal was a way to get that kind of ‘high’ value without worrying about availability (and earning credit towards points and status for the flights, too, which Delta and Virgin offer but most airlines don’t when redeeming miles for awards).

Coach travelers will have far fewer options than before to get the same value as before, while premium cabin travelers will have the opportunity to get a better deal than they used to – especially for The Edit hotels and for United business class. And those deals are much more available than I expected them to be, so Points Boost is looking better than I thought.

I shouldn’t have been so skeptical – Chase has a lot invested in making sure the launch of their product refresh looks great. The question is how this benefit will shape up over time – will they keep refreshing it or will we see fewer available flights, and gradual decline in redemption value, one tweak at a time? That’s something we’ll have to watch. But for now I am pleasantly surprised.

It looks like I’m going to start using my points through Chase Travel with Points Boost, where I rarely wanted to use it for 1.5x redemptions. On the one hand I see this as a cost-saving measure by Chase, and probably a devaluation in eliminating the 1.5 cent per point ‘value floor’ for their points, they’re actually delivering much more than I expected and in a way that will give me a better return on points.

Frequently international business class won’t get you 2 cents a point when you’re redeeming for awards, especially when you factor fuel surcharges and taxes. Now it’ll mean more flexibility with the itineraries and points and status-earning, too, on top of better value – if Points Boost itineraries match my needs (which right now they should, at least with United, but perhaps with Emirates!).

Chase Sapphire Reserve®
Sapphire Reserve for Business^SM

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