Ultimate rewards transfer partners

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To redeem your Ultimate Reward points, you'll need to visit UltimateRewardsPoints.Chase.com or click on the Ultimate Rewards button when you are looking at your credit card account.

Before you use your points from your Freedom Unlimited (or other Chase cards), you need to transfer them to the account that belongs to your Sapphire Reserve card. There is no charge and you can transfer points as frequently as you want.

Purchasing travel with your Ultimate Reward points

The easiest way to use your points is to purchase travel through the Chase website. Because the site is powered by Expedia, you can use your points for a wide variety of travel purchases, including tourist activities, cruises, and vacation rentals.

When you book, you can use any combination of points and dollars. Each point you use is worth 1.5 cents (with the Sapphire Reserve Card).

You'll get the same prices on the Chase site as you'd get on the Expedia site, including lower "Expedia member prices". However, you'd often be able to get a better deal elsewhere, particularly for hotels and car rentals. For these categories, always double-check our recommended websites, before using your points. Expedia's prices for airfare and cruises are typically as good as you'd get anywhere, so these are almost always good options.

Transferring your Ultimate Reward points to travel partners

You'll usually get better value per point when you transfer them to partner award programs. You'll get 1 point or mile in each partner program for every Ultimate Reward point you transfer.

• Once you've transferred your points, they are the same as any other frequent flyer mile or hotel point. For example, once you transfer 25,000 Ultimate Rewards to United Airlines, you'll receive 25,000 United frequent flyer miles, that you would redeem, as normal, through the United frequent flyer program.
• You can wait to transfer your Ultimate Reward points until just before you need to use them. That's one of the big advantages of Ultimate Rewards. Rather than locking yourself into points with any particular program, you can transfer them to the program where you need them. Because you can transfer them back, don't transfer them until just before you know you are going to use them.
• You'll need to have an account with the partner's reward program. For example, if you want to transfer your points to the British Airways program, you'll need to set up a British Airways account first. If you haven't transfer points in the past, you'll need to provide your partner account information to the Chase website.
• Besides Hyatt, it is generally not worth transferring your points to Ultimate Reward's other hotel partners. IHG points are typically only worth about .6 cents each, and can be acquired using the cash & points trick for .625 cents each. Marriott and Ritz Carlton points are only worth .7 cents. It will be extremely rare for you to get more than 1.5 cents per point by transferring to these programs. Just use them to make a reservation through the Chase website, or save them for some future redemption. However, if you only need a few more points to book an award night, it might be worthwhile.
• You can only transfer Ultimate Reward points to yourself (plus up to one authorized cardholder). For example, if you haven't paid to make your spouse an authorized cardholder, you can't transfer your points to their United Airlines account. However, most frequent flyer programs will let you purchase tickets for someone else. So, you can still get them a frequent flyer ticket, but you'll have to use your own account.
• Points need to be transferred in units of a 1,000.
• Most point transfers happen instantly. However, transfers to Singapore airlines can take up to two days. If you call Singapore, they will usually put the tickets on "hold", while you wait for your points to transfer. Transfers to IHG and Marriott can also take one to two days, but as discussed above, you will generally never want to transfer to these programs anyway.

Booking Hyatt hotel rooms

Don't be surprised if the main way you wind up using your Ultimate Reward points is by transferring them to Hyatt to book hotel rooms.

On many trips, Hyatt "award" nights provide significantly more value than the 1.5 cents per point you'd get by booking travel on the Chase website. And because Hyatt doesn't adjust the award pricing or limit availability, it is much easier than using your points for frequent flyer tickets.

• It is not hard to receive values of 1.75 cents per point on Hyatt award nights. When hotel prices are higher than normal, you find a particularly good award rate, you have an opportunity to stay in one of their Category 1 hotels, or their is some sort of special event, point can be worth up to 3 cents or more. You can also get very high value on paper, when you use your points to book Hyatt's most expensive hotels. But, always consider the price that the room is really worth to you, not the price they are asking for.
• If their are standard hotel rooms available, you can book them with your points. Hotels can decide whether they want to make upgraded rooms available.

Category	Room	Club Room	Suite	Premium Suite
1	5,000	7,000	8,000	10,000
2	8,000	12,000	13,000	16,000
3	12,000	17,000	20,000	24,000
4	15,000	21,000	24,000	30,000
5	20,000	27,000	32,000	40,000
6	25,000	33,000	40,000	50,000
7	30,000	39,000	48,000	60,000

• Using points to upgrade paid stays provides great value. You can upgrade a paid reservation to a Regency / Grand Club room for only 3,000 points per night, and to a Suite at only 6,000 points per night. Upgrading is especially valuable at their more expensive hotels.
• One nice thing about Hyatt award nights is that they waive any resort fees, making award nights relatively more valuable at hotels that add expensive resort fees to the bill.

For more details see Our Complete Guide to the World of Hyatt.

Southwest and JetBlue: Fixed value airline programs

Southwest and JetBlue operate "fixed-value" frequent flyer programs. That means you can don't have to find award availability—you can use miles, instead of cash, for any flight. While that makes it easy to use your points, it also means that you can never get outsized value from your points, the way you can with other programs.

The value per point is around the same for every flight, but because of the details in the way it is calculated, it will varies within a small range.

You'll get about the same 1.5 cents per point you'd get by using your points to purchase travel through Chase.

Since you need to purchase Southwest flights on the Southwest website, the ability to transfer your points, makes it easy to purchase Southwest airline tickets, at about the same value per point as purchasing any other tickets through Chase.

For JetBlue, you might get a small amount of extra value by using your points through their frequent flyer program. But, typically you'd be better off buying them using your Ultimate Reward points through the Chase website, or saving your points for a future redemption. When you purchase your tickets with Ultimate Reward points or cash, you'll receive new JetBlue miles for the flight. When you convert your Ultimate Reward points to JetBlue miles and use them, you won't receive any new miles.

Using your Ultimate Reward Points for frequent flyer tickets

Which program you can use for which airlines

By transferring your points to an Ultimate Rewards airline partner, you can book frequent flyer points on around 100 airlines.

You can book each airline with any of the programs in the following list. Look for the dark blue "UR" symbol to see the programs where you can transfer your Ultimate Reward programs. There be multiple options for any given airline.

List of Which Miles Work for Which Airlines

If the airline can be booked with "All Star Alliance programs", you can use United or Singapore. If the airline can be booked with "All SkyTeam programs", you can use Air France's Flying Blue program. If an airline can be booked with "All Oneworld programs", you can use British Airways or Iberia miles. You may also be able to use Virgin Atlantic or Aer Lingus to book some of the alliance airlines.

Choosing between United and Singapore

For any Star Alliance flights you can choose between United's MileagePlus program and Singapore's Kris Flyer program.

For most flights with fuel surcharges, United is usually a better option than Singapore. It never charges fuel surcharges on award flights, while Singapore does.

If you want to fly on Singapore's incredible first class suites, you'll need to use Singapore miles. They don't make them available to partner programs.

From US	Economy		Business		First
To	UA	Sin	UA	Sin	UA	Sin
Domestic	25	SE		SE	50-70	SF
Hawaii	45	SE		SB	80-100	SF
Mexico	35	SE	60	SB	80	SF
Caribbean	35	SE	60	SB	80	SF
Central America	35	SE	60	SB	80	SF
Europe (United)	60	SE	120	SB		SF
Europe (Other)	60	SE	140	SB	220	SF
Middle East	85	SE	170	SB	280	SF
N. Africa	80	SE	160	SB	260	SF
Africa	80	SE	160	SB	260	SF
N. Asia (China)	70	SE	160	SB	240	SF
Japan (United)	70	SE	140	SB		SF
Japan (Other)	70	SE	160	SB	220	SF
South Asia	80	SE	180	SB	280	SF
Central Asia	85	SE	170	SB	280	SF
Oceania (United)	70	SE	140	SB		SF
Oceania (Other)	70	SE	160	SB	220	SF
Australia/NZ	80	SE	180	SB	260	SF
N. South America	40	SE	70	SB	90	SF
S. South America	60	SE	120	SB	160	SF

Choosing between British Airways and Iberia

Sweet spots

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