How the 10xTravel Team Would Spend 75,000 Chase Bonus Points

Chase offers one of the most flexible points currencies in the world of points and miles. The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and Chase Sapphire Reserve® are two of the top-recommended cards we suggest to people just getting started with travel credit cards or for those who simply don’t yet have one of these cards. And for good reason.

These two cards offer generous welcome offers, valuable spending bonuses in categories like dining and travel, travel protections, and more, plus they are your ticket to earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points with a personal credit card.

Current Offers for Chase Sapphire Cards

Here are the current offers for the Chase Sapphire cards.

Remember, you can only hold one of the Sapphire cards, so to help you choose which one is best for you, check out our Chase Sapphire Preferred Card vs. Chase Sapphire Reserve comparison.

The typical welcome offer for these cards is around 60,000 Chase points. Add some regular spending to that, especially in categories where you can get anywhere from 2X to 5X points, and let’s estimate that you’ve earned 75,000 Chase points.  You can do a lot with those points! And to prove it, some of our team members are sharing how they would spend 75,000 Chase points.

Let the trip planning begin!

Travis Cormier

When challenged with how to spend 75,000 bonus points, the first thing that came to mind was a long weekend holiday somewhere easy. After all, the best way to know you’re getting value for your points is when you use them for the first time. For many people, a long weekend somewhere close by where you can scratch a lot of costs really helps prove that this does work.

So what’s a nearby destination to travel to for many of us based in the United States? Mexico, of course. And where else but the Riviera Maya.

I’m going to use a transfer partner that I’m sure won’t be the only time in this article you’ll hear it: World of Hyatt. Hyatt makes for a great Chase transfer partner because it has competitive award rates. This means you can often get high-quality hotels without burning all of your points for one night.

The hotel in particular that I’m going to recommend, and a number of people recommend, is the Hyatt Zilara Riviera Maya. This adults-only all-inclusive hotel means not only will you be saving on the hotel, you’ll also be able to save on food and drink costs at your destination.

The Hyatt Zilara Riviera Maya is a category C in Hyatt’s all-inclusive award chart. This means that off-peak nights cost 21,000 points per night. Standard nights cost 25,000 points per night. And peak nights cost 29,000 points per night.

Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to Hyatt 1:1, meaning you’ll receive 1 Hyatt point for every 1 Chase point that you transfer. Three nights would cost 63,000 points at off-peak rates, 75,000 at standard rates or 87,000 points if all three nights were listed at peak rates.

While planning for this, it wasn’t too hard to find plenty of off-peak and standard rates, particularly outside of the summer months (which is still a great time to travel to the Riviera Maya). Even during off-peak dates that I found, the cash price can be around $500 per night, meaning you’re getting around $1,500 in travel for 75,000 points (plus some more once you consider your food and drink savings).

If you find all three nights at off-peak rates, you can even use some of your remaining points to help cover flight costs. I was able to find round-trip flights from my home airport of Houston (IAH) to Cancun (CUN) for only 15,000 points round trip. While that technically adds up to 78,000 points if you score three off-peak nights, that’s still pretty close to one round-trip flight plus three nights, making for a great long weekend getaway to Mexico.

Lovan Edwards

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are my favorite points currency for a lot of reasons. Chase has a lot of useful transfer partners, has multiple transfer bonuses throughout the year and offers amazing value for hotel redemptions, especially in comparison to other flexible currencies.

This is how I would spend 75,000 Ultimate Rewards points.

There’s a common misconception that you need hundreds of thousands or even a million Chase points to be able to travel to international destinations on points, and I want to show you what’s possible with the points you could potentially earn with one welcome offer.

Let’s visit one of my favorite countries: Colombia. I checked a variety of dates and even with moderate flexibility you can find one-way pricing for 20,000 miles each leg from New York (JFK) to Bogota (BOG) on Avianca.

If you have Priority Pass access, both airports have suitable lounge options for a decent meal, Wi-Fi and comfortable seating while you wait to board. To book the award space, you’d transfer 40,000 Ultimate Reward points to Air Canada Aeroplan at a 1:1 ratio. You’re able to do this booking since Avianca and Air Canada are both Star Alliance partners.

Take a look at our transfer partner cheat sheet to see which loyalty programs your Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to, as well as which airlines share alliance and non-alliance partnerships.

And we can’t forget about lodging. For that, we’ll turn to none other than the crowd favorite Hyatt. There is a Category 3 Grand Hyatt for 9,000 World of Hyatt points a night (for an average value of 2 cents per point). You can spend four nights there by transferring 36,000 Ultimate Rewards points directly to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. This brings the total points cost for the entire booking to a total of 76,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points.

If you want an even more points friendly option, there’s a Category 1 Hyatt Place for only 3,500 points per night. You could spend an entire week there and still have points left over to go toward your next trip.

Anya Kartashova

In the most recent installment of a 10xTravel team article, we discussed how we would use 150,000 American Express Membership Rewards points, and I chose to redeem my hypothetical Amex points for flights to India. Well, once I’m finished traveling across the vibrant yet chaotic country, I’d like to relax on a beach, so I’d likely head to Goa, India, and conclude the trip in a tropical location with a drink in hand. This is where 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points come in.

Goa has multiple Hyatt properties, and I’d likely go with the Grand Hyatt Goa, a Category 4 property that requires between 12,000 and 18,000 World of Hyatt points per night, depending on whether off-peak, standard or peak pricing applies.

Let’s say that the redemption rate is 15,000 points, a standard rate, which means I could book five nights at the Grand Hyatt Goa with 75,000 Chase points.

A balcony garden-view room is considered a standard room at this hotel. There are also club rooms and suites, and one of my friends who is a Globalist member in the World of Hyatt program can send me a Guest of Honor certificate that I can apply to this stay and have access to all the Globalist perks, such as club lounge access and complimentary breakfast.

If I chose to book a lower-category property for a longer stay, I could settle for the Hyatt Place Goa Candolim or the Hyatt Centric Candolim Goa, which go for 5,000 to 8,000 points per night at standard redemption rates, respectively. In this case, a 75,000-point bonus could get me between nine and 15 award nights.

So, depending on how long I’d want to stay in India, I could spend five to 15 nights in Goa with 75,000 Chase points.

Emily Jaeckel

With my 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards, I’m using the ultimate combination of Southwest and Hyatt to build a nice long weekend getaway. Living in Denver, I love using Southwest and our companion pass to make short getaways super simple and doable.

This go around, my choice is a visit to Lake Tahoe. I’ve got my eye on the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort. This is a category 5 Hyatt hotel which means that during off-peak times, rooms can be booked for 17,000 points per night and during peak season the price can increase to 23,000 points per night. I’ll be going off-peak to make the most of my Chase Ultimate Rewards. Visiting off-peak for 3 nights will cost me 51,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points transferred to World of Hyatt at a 1:1 transfer ratio.

This leaves me with 24,000 points left to book the flights to get us there. I know it sounds like an impossible feat to find two round-trip tickets at that amount, but it can be done! This is where our Southwest Companion Pass comes in handy. There are lots of Southwest flights between Denver and Reno that are around 9,000 points each way. This means that I can easily book tickets for myself for a total of around 18,000 points and add my husband as my companion for just $5.60 each direction. Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to Southwest at a 1:1 ratio, so we’re coming in just under budget on this trip at a total of 69,000 points for a great weekend visit to Lake Tahoe.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are several options for fun and exciting trips you can take with 75,000 Chase points, from jetting off to Mexico, Columbia or Lake Tahoe, to redeeming an award stay for up to 15 nights in India.

Happy Travels!