Should You Transfer Chase Points To Hyatt?

Hyatt operates more than 1,200 hotels in 75 countries, spanning extended-stay properties like Hyatt House to all-inclusive resorts like Ziva, Zilara and Secrets properties. World of Hyatt is its rewards program and free nights can be redeemed for as few as 3,500 points or up to 45,000 points per night at some premium properties during peak season.

Should you be moving all or some of your Chase Ultimate Rewards® points over to World of Hyatt? Let’s dive into the math to help you decide.

Simply put, you should be transferring your points over to World of Hyatt when you can get an outsized value from your points instead of redeeming them directly within the Chase Travel℠ portal. Redeeming your points directly via Chase can get you somewhere between 1 cent to 1.5 cents per point, depending on the credit card that you have.

As an example, let’s say you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card where your Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1.25 cents each when redeemed through the travel portal. Redeeming 10,000 points via the Chase portal would mean you could get $125 off of your hotel room. But if the same hotel you’re looking at costs fewer than 10,000 points with World of Hyatt, you should probably send your points over to Hyatt directly instead.

Another benefit of booking directly with Hyatt is the ability to receive your elite status benefits and earn nights towards higher status. As with most third-party portals, Ultimate Rewards bookings are ineligible for many of the benefits that come with Hyatt elite status. Booking directly ensures that you get all of the benefits you’ve worked hard for.

When booking with points, all World of Hyatt members also get waived resort fees and Globalist members receive free parking, adding up to huge savings on a multi-night booking. Parking for hotels in metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York City can be $80 a night or higher, so eliminating this charge can translate to serious savings.

Let’s look at an example of a superior value for your Chase points. The Hyatt Regency Washington Dulles airport is a category 1 hotel, meaning that points rates can range from 3,500 to 7,500 points per night. For one night that we checked, the cost of the room would have been 5,000 points or $209 plus tax for a member rate.

Sapphire Preferred cardholders who booked directly through Chase would need 19,796 points for the same room. So sending your points from Chase to Hyatt would save you 14,796 points each night of your stay.

Chase Sapphire Reserve® cardholders would come out ahead too. Even with the card’s 50% bonus on Ultimate Rewards travel redemptions through Chase Travel℠, booking the room above through Chase would cost you about 16,500 points. In this case, transferring to Hyatt would still save you over 11,000 points.

Another great use of Hyatt points is booking suites for more room to stretch out, bring additional family members along for your vacation, or just treat yourself to a little slice of fabulousness. The Andaz Maui at Wailea is a resort where a Premium Suite can set you back over $2,000 a night before taxes and service charges. After taxes you could be dishing out over $2,400 a night.

Using 70,000 points per night, while a hefty sum, brings that grand total down to $0. As we mentioned before, resort fees are always waived for World of Hyatt members on free nights.

As a Sapphire Preferred cardholder, booking this same room directly through the Chase portal would cost upwards of 160,000 points a night. Again this makes transferring your points from Chase to Hyatt a winning strategy.

Make sure to run the numbers on the Chase Travel portal price vs. booking directly with Hyatt to ensure you’re maximizing your hard-earned points.

Making the transfer from Chase to Hyatt couldn’t be simpler. First, log into your Chase Portal and click on “transfer to travel partners” at the top of the page.

Next, find World of Hyatt from the list and add your World of Hyatt number. If you don’t have a World of Hyatt number, you can sign up here and it’ll take you directly to the Hyatt website to create a profile. Note, that the names have to match exactly, so if you have a shortened name with Hyatt (Josh for Joshua, Ben for Benjamin, Sue for Susan, etc) you’ll need to get Hyatt to adjust it to match the name on your credit card.

Decide how many points you need, in increments of 1,000, and hit send.

Chase to Hyatt Transfer Ratio

Luckily, Chase sets the Ultimate Rewards to Chase ratio at a generous 1:1, so for a 5,000-point Hyatt stay you’ll only need to send 5,000 Ultimate Rewards. Note that there is no cost imposed by Chase to send the points or any cost from Hyatt to receive them in your account.

How Long Does It Take To Transfer Chase Points to Hyatt?

Transfers from Chase to Hyatt almost always happen instantaneously, with Chase having to manually process transfers if they feel that something seems off. For example, don’t send 1,000 points as a test case before sending the rest of your points, as this can potentially result in a delay for your second set of points.

The answer to this question is always “it depends,” but there are many times when it makes perfect sense to move your points over.

Start by running a simple calculation on how many points it will take via the Chase travel portal. Remember that when you book via the Chase website you’re going to be paying taxes and fees on the cash rate and you’ll need to redeem points to offset that charge. Booking a points stay with Hyatt eliminates nearly all taxes and fees making your points even more valuable.

Next, head over to the Hyatt website and see if the hotel you want to stay at has award stay availability. If it does and if the points required are less than what you’d pay with Chase, then it makes sense to move the points over.

One thing we do caution against is transferring points speculatively before you’re ready to book a stay. Ultimate Rewards points transfers are one-way–you can’t move your points back to Chase after you’ve sent them to a travel partner like Hyatt. For this reason, we recommend keeping your points as flexible Ultimate Rewards until you have a specific use case in mind and confirmed availability.

With Hyatt’s ever-expanding portfolio of hotels, chances are high that you’ll have options wherever you travel. And since free nights start at just 3,500 points and include perks like elite status benefits and no taxes and fees, transfers to the World of Hyatt program can provide an exceptional value for your Chase Ultimate Rewards points.