If you're reading this article, you've probably accumulated some amount of points and/or have no idea what to do with your existing points. Chances are you've seen travel influencers talk about their crazy redemptions, but never really had the time to dig into these yourself.
Sometimes, there is beauty in simplicity. This article will cover easy ways to redeem your points that are low effort, have decent value, and/or not too difficult to find.
What Should Points Be Baselined At?
On average, without transfer partners or anything fancy, 1 point is typically considered to be worth 1 cent. However, it's not incredibly difficult to net just a little bit more out of your points with some of these methods below.
Redeeming Points Via Travel Portal
With the right credit cards, booking through portals can be some of the easiest ways to immediately get 25-50% more value out of your points. Additionally, since booking through travel portals and paying with points is equivalent to a "cash" fare, you're eligible to earn miles on it as usual.
Chase Travel Portal (Sapphire Preferred / Sapphire Reserve / Ink Preferred)
If you have an active Chase Sapphire or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, you can book flights for 1.25-1.5 cents per point in the Chase Travel Portal.
Booking through the portal is simple: all you have to do is navigate to the Chase Travel Portal site, search for your flights, and elect to pay with your points. The value of your points should reflect the card you have (Chase Sapphire Preferred nets 1.25 cents per point; Chase Sapphire Reserve nets 1.5 cents per point).
AMEX Travel Portal (Business Platinum)
If you have an active Business Platinum Card® from American Express, then you can redeem your Membership Reward points in the travel portal for a 35% rebate.
When booking flights with this option, you'll need to make sure to select the "Pay With Points" at checkout. Since this is a rebate, you need to have enough points on hand to redeem at a 1 cents per point rate initially. For example, if the flight you're looking at is $1,000 USD, you'll need to first pay for the booking with 100,000 AMEX points. In a few weeks, you'll receive a refund of 35,000 AMEX points that you can continue to use for future purposes.
With this rebate, you can get up to 1.53 cents per point.
Last Minute Award Availability
Got a last minute flight?
Airlines tend to release lots of last minute award availability at saver rates (the lowest award rates allowed by a program) starting 14 days out from your date of departure. This can be a great way to redeem your points at decent value, as cash rates for flights then are typically extremely high.
Virgin Atlantic Flights To/From United Kingdom
Virgin Atlantic typically has significant award availability to/from the United Kingdom across all cabin classes: economy, premium economy, and business class. They also have a neat tool to check for award availability.
The main catch is that Virgin Atlantic award fees/taxes are typically very high. While this makes redemptions less valuable, you can still net a healthy CPP relative to flying roundtrip to London.
While taxes/fees on Virgin Atlantic tickets are about $200 each way, when comparing against other reasonable flights, you're still beating 1.5 CPP when redeeming directly within the travel portals with the right cards.
US To Europe Via Air France Promo Awards
Air France runs a monthly promotional award discounting its economy and business class anywhere between 25-50% one way. This can be an extremely high value, yet easy way to get to Europe on a budget. For example, with one of Air France's most recent promotions, I was able to score 15k one way from San Francisco to Paris (and I was able to add a stopover going to Zurich for just $20 USD more!).
Here are some of our favorite Air France promo awards that we've seen in the past:
BRAND
Route
Fare Class
Old Promo Cost (Starting)
SF/LAX <> Paris
Economy
15,000
Houston <> Paris
Economy
15,000
Boston <> Paris
Economy
12,750
Raleigh <> Paris
Business
37,500
New York <> Paris
Economy
11,250
United Airlines Standard Availability Business Class
United Airlines dynamically prices its award flights, and while saver fares (think 80-110k one ways to Europe/Asia from the United States) are harder to find, their more expensive "standard rate" flights are extremely populous.
Despite the hit to your points wallet, you can still easily net over 1.5 cents per point with these redemptions, as comparable business class flights will likely run you anywhere starting at $4,000 roundtrip.
While United standard availability business class seats are pricey, they are plentiful, even during expensive travel times.
Hyatt Hotels
Those with Chase cards are likely familiar with Hyatt, as its probably one of the best ways to easily redeem your points for more than 1.5 CPP. Hyatt awards are extremely high value, with the ability to book the cheapest rooms at just 5k points per night, which is ridiculous when comparing against IHG, Hilton, or Marriott.
Hyatt's award chart, as seen below, is very favorable. You can score some excellent midrange properties for just 12k pts a night, netting you well above 2 CPP on average!
BRAND
Category
Off-Peak
Standard
Peak
Cat 1
3,500
5,000
6,500
Cat 2
6,500
8,000
9,500
Cat 3
9,000
12,000
15,000
Cat 4
12,000
15,000
18,000
Cat 5
17,000
20,000
23,000
Cat 6
21,000
25,000
29,000
Cat 7
25,000
30,000
35,000
Cat 8
35,000
40,000
45,000
Conclusions
Although the world of points and miles can seem intimidating at first, there are several easy ways to redeem your points at greater than our baseline of 1 cent per point. Just by choosing a slightly different, no frills strategy, you can increase the value of your points anywhere from 25-100% on average.
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