How to Use Chase’s New Points Boost Feature

Coinciding with the relaunch of Chase's Sapphire Reserve card, the bank launched their new points boost feature, which will give card members higher value of up to two cents per point on travel portal bookings rather than the current 1.5 cents per point on the Sapphire Reserve or the current 1.25 cents per point on some of Chase's other cards. Because points boost is available on several cards, not just the Reserve. In this video, I want to go through how to use Chase's new points boost feature. no matter whether you have the reserve card or some of the other ones it is available on. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit shifu and on this channel I talk about US credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, do subscribe. But let's get into the video. So points boost is available on the Sapphire Reserve personal and business versions and on the Sapphire Preferred and the Inc. Business Preferred. The highest value you are going to get for your points with points boost will be on the reserve cards and that is up to 2 cents per point in value. But those cards have the highest annual fees as well, $795. On the cheaper Sapphire Preferred and Inc. cards which have $95 annual fees, you can get up to $1.75 per point in value with points boost. Let's actually look at the value across all cards. And I've done some testing myself, but I only have the ink preferred and my wife has the Sapphire preferred. So, I've only been able to test those two, but there is an article in frequent miler where they have data for all of the cards. So, I'm just going to show you that as a reference, and I'll paste a link to it somewhere down below. So, here is the value that you get for the different types of redemptions as per frequent miler. Sapphire Reserve Hotel points boosts. The edit hotels, that's their hotel collection, equivalent of the AMX fine hotels and resorts collection points boost is 2 cents per point. And it seems that pretty much I think every hotel in the edit is in there. than other hotels. If points boost is available, it's going to be 1.75 cents per point. Airfare points boost. Economy 1.5 cents per point. I'm not sure if economy is going to have points boosts available though. Uh we'd have to confirm on that. As far as I knew, it was going to be 1 cent per point on Economy. Um but uh you know, maybe they know something. I don't unless they're just listing the uh original points value for people who had the card before June 23rd. Okay. Economy Plus and Premium Economy 1.75 cents per point. business and first two cents per point if points boost is available. Chase Sappa preferred and inc business preferred hotel points boost and the edit by the way is not available. So there is just a hotel points boost of 1.5 cents per point on hotels that have it. Then we have airfare points boosts. Economy is going to be 1.25. Again, I'm not sure if that's actually what it's going to be. They might just be mistaking the current value that you get for the points for people who are grandfathered in, i.e. they had the card before June 23rd. Economy Plus and Premium Economy 1.5 cents per point. Business and First Class 1.75 cents per point. Now, let's actually go into my account and see what points boost looks like and how to use it. The account I will be showing you this on is on an Inc. Preferred account. Okay? So, if you have the Sapphire Preferred, you should see the same results. And if you have the Sapphire Reserve or the Reserve Business, then you will see higher values, but the way it works should be the same. So, I go into my Ultimate Rewards dashboard on the Inc. preferred card, and you can see I don't have that many points here, but I can still search, and the prices in points will come up. So, go up here to travel and then click book travel. Now, we're in Chase's travel portal. And if we scroll down, you can actually see there's currently a big ad for the new points boost feature. You can click in to see how it works. There's a short explanation, but let's actually make a test booking and we can see for ourselves. So, let's test it with a hotel booking first. We'll search New York for one night in July. And here's what we get. You can see that some hotels say points boost and some do not. But you can click this little points boost only switch and filter out all the non-points boost hotels. You can see the points boost numbers quoted in blue. And in this one, the value is 1.5 cents per point, which is better than the 1.25 I would have got before. Now, a lot of the hotels being displayed are very expensive. So, is points boost only available at high-end hotels? Well, let's filter out the expensive ones. So, go up to all filters and let's bring this slider down to under $500 per night. And it seems there are still $160 results in New York City. You can see here it's still points boost only activated. And we have hotels for $300, $400 a night boosted at 1.5 cents per point. Not sure why many of them also seem to require a nominal amount of money too, like $25 or so. But, you know, that's just what I'm seeing. But that's in a big city. Okay, let's now search a mediumsized town. Okay, my local town near where I live, Middletown, New York. It's about 1 and 1/2 hours north of New York City. And yeah, look, way less options. Just four hotels with points boost. And none of them are actually in Middletown. One of them is about a 15-minute drive. The others look more like a 40minute drive or so. But it's cool to see the Cartwright Resort, an indoor water park showing up. That's a popular attraction for a weekend away. So, good to see that we could get good value if you wanted to go there. So, my conclusion here has to be you're probably going to be able to quite easily find better value at hotels than you would have done before in the big cities, but out in the countryside, you're going to often be redeeming at 1 cent per point. Luckily though for me and the people who have had this card since before June 23rd on points you earn before June 23rd or actually all the way up until October 26th 2025. You're still going to get that original 1.25 cents in value or 1.5 cents in value on the Sapphire Reserve until October 26th, 2027. So two more years with those points. All right, let's move on to looking at some flights. And I'm going to search New York to London. Wait, New York to New York. What am I doing? I think I'll correct myself in a moment. Should we do business? No, let's do economy first and we'll see what happens. So, we have a lot of United flights on this route that show up with points boost. Just be aware, even if it says points boost here. If the number of points isn't written in blue, then it's just the standard amount. Okay? For card holders who signed up before June 23rd, that's currently going to be 1.25 cents per point on the Inc. Business, which is what I'm showing you. Uh, but for new card holders, it'll just be 1 cent per point. If we scroll through, we can see in premium economy, we start seeing blue numbers. Okay, so we have 1.5 cents per point in premium economy and 1.75 in business on the ink preferred. On the Sapphire Reserve, business would be 2 cents per point. If I hit business class only and then points boost only, I get some additional Air Canada flights that offer points boost in business class at 1.75 cents per point. And now, just to let you know, this is the price for a round trip. Okay, around 200,000 points for a ticket of around $3,500. To put that in perspective, if you transfer Chase points out to United and can find Saver award availability, you can get a roundtrip business class ticket from New York to London for 160,000 points plus about $300 in taxes. This is 200,000 points and no cash component. So although the value is a little less, just slightly less, it's actually not far behind transferring points out and you'll have no blackout dates and you'll be able to earn miles and status when you fly. And that's just the ink preferred at 1.75 cents per point on the Sapphire Reserve at 2 cents per point or about 180,000 points for this trip. It's actually a little better value than booking with United miles transferred out from Chase and having to pay those additional taxes and fees. In this particular case, it seems United Airlines is really being pushed by Chase at this time. But the other airlines that should have points boost at the moment are Air Canada, Southwest Airlines, Emirates, Quantis, and Singapore Airlines. Frequent miler in their research said that they found boosted flights on every one of those airlines except for Southwest. United has points boost availability on almost every flight. These airlines are supposed to change over time, so you may get some good value in the future, even if there isn't a boosted flight available now on a route that you want to fly. So, that's my little test of the system. I must say, I am reasonably impressed. If you can find the availability, this is going to be better than what Chase offered before on these cards, and it does seem like there is a lot of availability. Maybe people will decide where they want to go on vacation based on which flights and hotels have points boost and it could work out really well. There also seems to be a good availability for hotels in big cities and obviously on flights the major availability is going to be on United right now. So if you live near a United hub like I do, Newark, New Jersey, one of New York City's airports, then you're good to go. For card holders who have had their cards since before June 23rd, just remember for points that we already have in our accounts or that we earn before October 26th, you will still get your original value of either 1.5 cents per point on the reserve or 1.25 cents per point on the other two cards for two more years, okay? Until October 26th, 2027. So, you do have a backup if you can't find a points boost. All right? you can still book at that original rate for the points you currently have for two more years. Just a warning for using Chase Travel in general though, do make sure the prices that show up are the same as you find on Google flights or with the airline or hotel in general, okay? Because sometimes people report Chase showing prices that are higher than if you book direct. All right, guys. Let me know your experiences with Points Boost in the comments down below. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new, and we'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.