How to save $1,900 on 5 nights in Mexico City
I booked a $4,000, 5-night trip at a 5-star hotel, with a business class flight, for around 200,000 points.
How it started: my friend messaged me saying she had around 200,000 points on her Chase Sapphire Preferred and she didn’t understand how it was supposed to cover a whole trip, when it barely covered the flights.
I immediately told her to avoid the Chase portal and transfer the points to travel partners. She was of course scared at first, which I understand. Moving hundreds of thousands of points to travel partners is scary! But once you do it the first time, you’ll feel so much more confident. (Tip: move 1,000 points to your account first, then move the rest after!)
Next, I asked her where she wanted to go. She said preferably somewhere warm and with good food - so we landed on Mexico City. I suggested her and her husband to stay in the Andaz Mexico City in the Condesa neighborhood, and to fly United since it was one of the only direct flights. They were flexible on the weekend, but wanted to go a Wednesday - Monday. We decided on March 3 - March 8th, 2027 (because we can’t always book trips when the points redemptions are best, we have to do what’s best for our schedules!)
When I went to the Chase Portal, the total for this trip was $3,811 or around 381,100 points (since she signed up for the card after Chase retired their old Chase Portal points redemption model). I was shocked!
The cost of booking a 5-night trip to Mexico City through the Chase Portal
I told her to give me a few minutes and I did the following:
I checked Hyatt to see what the nightly points redemption would be.
Instead of spending $390/night or booking with a poor redemption value through the Chase Portal, we could book it with 15,000 points/night directly with Hyatt. What would have cost $1,950 ended up being only 75,000 for all 5 nights. I’ll explain in detail how to transfer these points to Hyatt (and why it’s my favorite redemption!) in another blog post. In the meantime, I’d recommend checking out some other blogs to learn how.
I went directly to United to check the cost of booking direct, as well as the points redemption.
I find that booking flights through credit card portals is sometimes hit or miss. The portals will sometimes offer deals, but a lot of times, the prices are inflated. I always recommend looking at how much it costs to book the flight directly with the airline as a gut check. (And check out my other blog post about how you can “pay yourself back” with points instead of booking through the credit card portal.)
The nightly points redemption cost of the Andaz in Mexico City
United also had some great point redemptions to save money. On the Chase portal, flights were averaging around $771 for a direct economy flight. It was around the same on their website. Once I looked into the points redemption rates directly through United, the economy flight was only 45,000 United points. If we had booked these flights on the portal, it would have cost 77,100 Chase points.
But then, we took it a step further, and booked business class.
I realized while looking up the flights that she could fly business there for only 44,000 points and economy back for 22,500 points. This brought the points redemption to 66,500 United points, which was still less points than economy flight both ways in the Chase portal. The business class flight there and economy back would have cost around $931 if paid in cash.
In order to book these flights, she had to transfer her points to United, the same way she transferred them to Hyatt.
After all of the points were transferred, she ended up spending 208,000 on this trip. Compared to the quoted $3,811 on the Chase Portal (and the additional cost of the business class flights), she saved around $1,900 when compared to the cash value of the Chase points.
If you don’t already have a Chase Sapphire in your wallet, I highly recommend signing up for it here.
