How the 10xTravel Team Would Use 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

If you’ve earned or are on your way to earning 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, we’ve got three fun trips to inspire you on how to use them. Earning the points is one thing, but redeeming them is really what it’s all about.

Before we get into the trips, here are a few ways you might earn those points:

• Earn a welcome bonus or two on cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve®
• Combine your points with those of your P2 or split the cost of the trip, hotels through your points and flights through your P2’s points
• Earn referral bonuses from referring friends and family to the card(s) you have (note that there are limits on how many points you can earn through referrals, see your card details for more info)
• Rack up points from spending in the top earning categories for your card

One of the top welcome bonuses for Chase cards is on offer here:

Emily Jaeckel: Roatan, Honduras

With 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, my husband and I can take a dive trip to Roatan that we’ve been eyeing for a while.

When thinking through this trip, I started with the hotel. I knew there was a Kimpton in Roatan and had heard great things about it. At first, I looked at booking it directly through IHG. Considering I have the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card that gets me a fourth night free when booking with points, I assumed that would be the best way to book it. However, that turned out not to be the case and what I found by looking through the Chase Travel℠ portal was so much better. Let’s get into the details, because they are pretty wild and make getting the Chase Sapphire Reserve® incredibly worth it.

The Kimpton Grand Roatan Resort and Spa has a ton going for it from a booking perspective when going through Chase Travel℠.

1. It’s part of The Edit℠, so it qualifies for the $500 The Edit℠ credit and the booking comes with daily breakfast for two and a $100 property credit
2. It’s eligible for Points Boost, bringing the points cost much lower
3. It’s eligible for the $250 credit at select hotels and IHG One Rewards
4. It qualifies for the $300 annual travel credit (although this credit doesn’t require you to book through the portal)

Now stick with me on this booking math here. The total points needed for a four night stay here is 115,996 after taking the Points Boost discount into account.

However, you can pay with a mix of cash and points when checking out. Since this booking qualifies for three different stackable credits that come with the Chase Sapphire Reserve ($250 of The Edit credit, the $250 credit at select hotel properties including IHG, and the $300 annual travel credit) you can adjust the amount of points you want to use to book so that the cash amount exactly totals the amount you’d get back in credits.

With $800 worth of credits to use, you can set the amount of points to redeem to 67,500, leaving you with a remaining balance of $799.79. This cost gets completely wiped out by the credits on your statement balance and saves you 48,000 points.

And on top of that, you’ve already gotten more value out of the card than the $795 annual fee. So many wins! In comparison, booking directly through IHG by transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points would have cost 138,000 points for the four nights. I like the portal option so much better.

Now onto the flights! Since we saved so many points by taking advantage of many of the card’s travel credits, we have 82,500 points left to fly there and back. No problem at all. I’ve got non-stop economy flights on United picked out from Denver (DEN) to Roatan (RTB) that are just 17,000 per person each way. I get a bit of an extra discount for being a United card holder and for having Silver status. Since two of us are traveling, the total for these flights is 68,000 points roundtrip. Since United is a transfer partner of Chase, I can easily move the points I need into my United account to book these.

When it’s all said and done, I will have used 135,500 points for this trip, $800 in credits, paid $144 in taxes and fees and still have 14,500 left over from our 150,000-point start. The cash price of this trip would have been $3,940, so that brings me to a 2.8 cents per point redemption which I’m pleased with! To me, this makes this card an absolute no brainer to add to my wallet.

Anna Zaks: Flight to Sardinia

I manage our Award Booking Service so I get to see all the amazing trips our award bookers book for clients. Some are true unicorns, like JAL first class, and some are family trips to Europe or Costa Rica, but all are inspiring. I’ve been in this hobby for over 10 years, and I am constantly amazed what you can do with points and miles.

One of our client’s recent redemptions was a trip from the U.S. to Sardinia, Italy. This beautiful Mediterranean island has been on my wish list forever, so seeing someone else book this trip definitely caught my attention.

So if I had 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points to work with, I’d be heading to Sardinia. 150,000 Ultimate Rewards is almost enough points to book a roundtrip flight in business class for one person or roundtrip economy flights for two people.

Ultimate Rewards transfer to United, and you can book one-way in business class for 88,000 United miles or one-way in economy for 44,000 miles from almost any airport in the U.S. to Cagliari (CAG). If you have one of United’s credit cards with an annual fee, you can book the same award for 80,000 in business and 40,000 miles in economy. The great thing about booking with United miles, if your home airport is served by United, is that you should be able to book the entire ticket as one itinerary, no positioning flights necessary. That cuts down on stress and out of pocket costs. I know it’s not exactly 150,000, but Ultimate Rewards are easy to earn with a variety of Ultimate Rewards-earning cards from Chase.

I can’t wait to book flights to Sardinia and experience it all: great food, charming mountain top villages, stunning beaches and crystal clear blue water!

Travis Cormier: Qatar Q Suites

When deciding how I would use 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points my mind went to a variety of options. Originally I was thinking of putting together a full trip, and I had some options: Park Hyatt Cabo del Sol for three nights plus flights, a return to Costa Rica or somewhere in the Caribbean.

But I realized that really, I’d like to use it for one of those aspirational trips. Particularly, I’d use them to fly Q Suites. I’ll be honest up front, it’s not going to leave a lot leftover for hotels, but I’m still going to get at least two nights in Qatar on points.

I chose Q suites over a complete vacation because, honestly, it’s not only how I would use 150,000 Chase points, it’s actually how I did use them recently. And it’s a good way to show how you can use points from one card to get some aspirational experiences even if it doesn’t equate to an entire trip.

You can book Qatar Q Suites for 70,000 Avios each way when you book through Qatar directly.

So roundtrip 140,000 miles and you get to fly in one of the best business class products in the world.

Now I’m sure you’re looking over at the transfer partner cheat sheet and saying that Chase doesn’t transfer to Qatar. Officially, no it doesn’t. However, Qatar uses Avios, so if you have Avios with another program that is a Chase transfer partner, you can then move them over to Qatar. This is where British Airways comes in. BA is the “bridge” between Chase and Qatar. So you’d transfer your points from Chase to BA to Qatar. You’ll just have to link your British Airways and Qatar accounts first.

Here’s my tip for booking Q Suites and why I highly encourage looking through Qatar directly. Qatar opens award availability to its own program typically 360-365 days in advance. Most airlines are 330 days in advance. That means you can see availability through Qatar directly before it becomes available to most partners. If you have the ability to book that far out, availability tends to be pretty good.

So you’ve got your roundtrip flights, and 10,000 points left. While that isn’t going to go incredibly far, you can actually get two nights at the Hyatt Regency Oryx Doha. It is a Category 1 property, so “low” nights are 4,500 points per night. Although if you can find “lowest” availability in Hyatt’s new award chart, that drops down to 3,000 points per night which would mean three nights. The majority of the schedule at the time of writing is either low or lowest, so this isn’t an impossibility.

And if you’re worried about the value you’re getting, that works out to about 2 to 3 cents per point (cpp) on the Hyatt stays, and after logging my trip in the Redemption Tracker in My10x, I saw that I got about 5cpp on the Qatar flights. These are both above my minimum threshold of 1.5cpp that I want to get for Chase points, so I know it’s a good deal to me.

So with 150,000 points, you could get roundtrip flights in Q Suites plus two to three nights in Doha. I’d likely spend more nights, and either find more points elsewhere or consider paying cash for additional nights (the Hyatt Regency is pretty affordable, around $100 per night). But to get to fly one of the most aspirational business class products with only 150,000 points? Sign me up.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, three very unique trips using 150,000 points. From Honduras to Italy to Qatar, there’s an adventure for everyone with these trips.

If you want to learn more about how we’d spend Chase points, here’s another team article we did on how we’d spend 100,000 Chase points.