How to use your $50 Chase Sapphire Preferred Hotel Travel Credit
One of our favorite starter travel rewards credit cards, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, has an elevated sign-up bonus offer of 80,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards points (Chase’s transferrable points currency) right now (and is rumored to be ending soon)! At the very minimum, you could use those 80k points for $1,000 in value in the Chase Travel Portal (where points can be redeemed for 1.25 cents), but likely WAY more when used to transfer to Chase’s travel partners, like Hyatt or Air Canada.
One of the things that holds some back from opening this card is that it has an annual fee. I completely understand this sentiment! Even though the Sapphire Preferred has an annual fee of only $95, it still feels excessive. It feels like you are just padding the pockets of the banks! However, don’t overthink this! A $95 annual fee for a sign-up bonus worth at least $1,000, but likely closer to $2,000?! Just let math make your decision on this one, not your principled stubbornness! ;) Now, if you want to re-evaluate if the card is still a value for you after Year 1, when you aren’t earning a sign-up bonus again, that’s completely understandable. We do it for every card upon renewal!
In addition to the sign-up bonus, there are also a few benefits of the Sapphire Preferred that are worth utilizing to get every ounce of value from the card, including both an Instacart benefit and a $50 hotel credit:
In this post, I want to focus on how to utilize the $50 annual Chase Travel hotel credit (which renews every cardmember anniversary date, not every calendar year). There are not many hoops you need to jump through to use the credit, except booking the hotel stay through the Chase Travel Portal and putting the purchase on your Chase Sapphire Preferred (and not paying with points).
First, you’re going to want to sign-in to your Chase account like normal. Then, click the “Rewards” box in the far right corner of your screen (or scroll down just below the “Accounts” section, if you’re on the Chase app).
Once you’re in the Ultimate Rewards portal, click the dropdown menu in the top left and then click on “Travel”.
Now that you are in the Travel Portal, make sure you have selected “Hotels”, as the $50 credit is only eligible for hotel stays, not flights, car rentals or experiences. Now, you are ready to search for the city and country of your potential stay. We utilized this benefit for a one-night stay on our recent trip to Peru (We landed in the evening in Lima and flew out to Cusco the next afternoon.) You can use the credit for any number of nights in a stay, but you will get maximum value for one-night stays (as a percentage of the total).
Once all of the options populate, I decided to filter for only 4 and 5 star hotels, with 4-star or 5-star ratings from Tripadvisor.
I was open to expanding the options to 3-star ratings as well, but enough great options came up that I didn’t need to!
I went with the cheapest rate ($70, with taxes and fees) for the hotel with the best reviews: Aku Hotel Lima. I rarely rely solely on Tripadvisor, as you never know if these 119 individuals had too high or too low of expectations. So, I also cross-check it with Google Reviews and message board sites like Reddit and FlyerTalk.
Once you click on the hotel that you think might be a good option, you will select your room type. It was just Courtney and I traveling, so a King room worked perfectly. 99% of the time we will select a room with Free Cancellation, even if it’s a bit more money, because we love the flexibility, in case our plans change. In this case, there was no additional cost for the free cancellation option. We also went with the option that did not include the breakfast buffet.
After we clicked on “Choose Room” from the first option above, we were brought to the “Checkout” screen. Here’s the two most important things to note to ensure you will actually trigger the credit (besides booking through the Chase Travel Portal): Select “Keep my points and pay XXX” and then utilize your Chase Sapphire Preferred to make the purchase! If you use points to make the purchase or put the purchase on a different credit card, you will not trigger the credit!
Once the credit is triggered (usually within 1-2 billing cycles), this stay will only cost us $20. Hard to find anything to complain about with that!
When we get the question, “Which credit card is best for me?” we always respond with, “It depends!” It depends on your financial situation, credit score, travel goals, etc. However, for beginners in the points and miles world, it’s hard to argue that the Chase Sapphire Preferred is usually a great place to start. It’s simple, has good bonus spending categories (like travel and restaurants), and has an amazing sign-up bonus right now. We especially love that if you utilize the $50 hotel credit and the $15 in quarterly Instacart credits, you can actually get more value for the card than you pay in the annual fee, without even taking the bonus into account!
