After not having traveled for almost 4 years due to the pandemic, I was ready to get back to the good life. My boyfriend’s birthday is around Memorial Day, so we decided to take a couple of extra days off and go to Florida.
In looking at hotel options that we could use points for, we decided on the St. Regis Bal Harbor. This will be my first hotel stay using travel hacking so I was excited.
At the time we were looking to travel, this hotel cost $5,270.28 for FOUR NIGHTS! Cash wise that price was too expensive so using points was the way to go.
FYI – I did look into other points redemption options but this was a good redemption for us given the location, short notice, and type of property we desired.
Transferring Chase Points to Marriott
Part of the reason I decided on this property was because there was a 50% transfer bonus to Marriot from Chase…meaning I could use fewer points.
The first step is to log into your Chase account and go to Ultimate Rewards.
Click the arrow beside your points total at the top left-hand side of the screen where it says “Earn / Use”.
Then click Transfer to Travel Partners.
You will see a list of all of Chase’s travel partners and you can click on the partner you are looking for. In my case, I clicked on Marriot.
Since I had never transferred to any travel partner before I had to link my Marriott account. To do this, you just need to confirm your Marriott Bonvoy account number twice.
Then you just enter the number of points you want to transfer.
On the next screen, you will be able to review the transfer and then click submit.
Booking on Marriott’s Website
In my case, it took about 48 hours for the point to show up in my account (Yes, I was nervous while I was waiting for the points to show up since it was my first time transferring points).
Once the point showed up, I booked the hotel normally except for the fact that I checked the box that states “Use Points/Certificates”.
Once the hotel I wanted showed up in the results, I clicked view prices and went through the normal booking process.
Cent Per Point Calculation
I personally don’t put a lot of value in the cent per point, other than making sure I’m getting more than one cent per point. What’s important to me is having experiences that I couldn’t otherwise afford or don’t want to spend money on.
The cent per point value from the St. Regis Bal Harbor booking is below:
Although getting ten cents per point is the highest, ten cents per point isn’t going to be the norm so don’t let not getting a huge cent per point value keep you from having experiences.
Final Thoughts
My first points booking was a success and we had an excellent time! So much so, that we want to go back!
If you want to see my review of the St. Regis Bal Harbor click here to read all about it.
Hopefully, this tutorial helped you make a similar booking! Until next time, safe travels!