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Chase has announced it's second-ever Ultimate Rewards transfer bonus. For a limited time, you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to IHG Rewards Club with a 60% bonus.
We are excited to see a new Chase transfer bonus. After all, the last one we saw was in May 2019, when Chase offered a 30% bonus for transferring BA Avios.
However, IHG is one of Chase's least valuable transfer partners. IHG points are worth far less per point than Ultimate Rewards points. Consequently, 1:1 Chase-to-IHG transfers are rarely a good idea. Is a 60% bonus enough to tilt the scales? We don't think so, and we'll show you why.
Transfer Bonus Offer Terms
- Transfer Ultimate Rewards points to IHG Rewards Club and receive 60% bonus IHG points.
- Bonuses are available on point transfers made through 11:59 PM ET on August 31, 2020.
- The minimum transfer amount is 1,000 points (1,600 IHG points after 60% bonus).
- Point transfers to IHG typically take ~5 hours to process and are final/non-reversible.
- Allow up to two days for the bonus points to hit your account.
Why This is a Poor Value Proposition
Without a transfer bonus, Chase uses a 1:1 transfer ratio for all Ultimate Reward travel partners. But all points don't have the same value. While my baseline valuation for Chase URs is 1.7¢ per point, I only value IHG points at 0.5¢ per point. Consequently, if you were to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to IHG, you'd effectively cut the value of your points by more than two-thirds. This makes transfers to IHG a poor value in most scenarios.
A 60% bonus doesn't do much to close the gap. Boosting IHG's 0.5¢ value by 60% still only translates into 0.8¢ per point.
Better Options
While 1.7¢ and 0.5¢ per point are my baseline values for these currencies, you may value them differently. And that's okay. But that still doesn't necessarily make this a good deal.
Personal valuations aside, all Ultimate Rewards members can achieve 1.25–1.5¢ per point through the Chase Travel Portal. Additionally, Sapphire cardholders can—for a limited time—get the same value by using URs to “Pay Yourself Back” for restaurant and grocery purchases. This means you're typically better off using your points in one of these ways instead of transferring to IHG.
Let's use a dummy booking at The Intercontinental Danang Sun Peninsula—one of our favorite IHG sweet spots—to demonstrate this point.
For a two-day stay next March, the award price for a base room is 87,500 IHG points. That's actually a great points deal for this property. Before IHG Rewards adopted a dynamic award pricing model, this property cost 70,000 points per night.
With the 60% transfer bonus, you'd need to transfer 55,000 Ultimate Rewards to receive the 88,000 IHG points required.
Meanwhile, the cash price for the same booking is $650.27 all-in for two nights.
If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve®, URs are worth 1.5¢ per point on bookings made with Chase Travel Portal. Thus, you could book the same room for only 43,351 points by using the portal instead of transferring.
If you hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, you receive 1.25¢ per point through the portal. That means you'll need to 52,022 Ultimate Rewards to book a cash stay through the Chase Travel Portal. You'd still save almost 3,000 points compared to transferring to IHG.
Bottom Line
Chase is offering a 60% transfer bonus to IHG Rewards Club. But it's probably not worth considering too long. If you'd like to grow your balance of IHG points, you're better off applying for an IHG co-branded credit card.
There is a silver lining. While this transfer bonus isn't valuable, the fact that Chase is continuing to offer periodic transfer bonuses is a good sign. Hopefully, we'll see some better deals in the future.
What Ultimate Reward partner would you like to see a transfer bonus for next?
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
I’m happy to have other people keep IHG and Ultimate Rewards solvent with these bad redemptions 🙃
I am happy that Chase is doing another bonus transfer. I am hoping to see more of these in the future but they are not known to do this, like Amex is. United would be way more enticing to me than IHG. If I had to top off my account maybe I would take advantage of this, otherwise nah. You’re right I’d rather get their card or buy points during a promo.
60% bonus is not bad as long as you are trying to top up to get to the redemption value.
yes, it’s would be better than have no bouns points when we are urgent to need some IHG points.
I am not agree with you , before IHG point not good value to use, but for now IHG point is very useful as we can use small than before point to redeem many good hotels.
At what maximum amount would you be willing to transfer in order to requalify for Spire and get the 25k bonus points?
Interesting question! Looking at just the math: around 25k UR points. After the 60% bonus, that would net you 40k IHG points. After adding in the 25k bonus, that’s 65k IHG points – which I’d value around $390 (0.6 cents each). I value UR at 1.5 cents at the bare minimum – as that’s what I can get from the Chase Travel Portal. 25k UR at 1.5 cents each is around $375 in value.
I agree that this is not a good deal at all. The only problem with the “pay yourself back” proposition is that you might not use the Sapphire card for those purchases. Groceries and Restaurants go on my Amex Gold card. So I don’t have any purchases for which to pay myself back on my Sapphire Reserve card. Now if they start allowing the Pay yourself back on travel…well then that would be a game changer.
As stated, this is not a good value proposition. Better to use your points elsewhere.
I would never transfer UR points to IHG, so completely agree with you.
Its an offer that doesn’t make sense.
The only IHG offer that always makes sense is the Ambassador membership.
Very timely deal. We are going to see more and more of these deals now that people realize we can travel safely. Its time to jump on this deal and get out there!
I was tempted when I saw the 60% bonus, but after seeing your math, I’m glad I waited to transfer. Here’s hoping Chase continues to offer these bonuses and that the next one is more enticing.
Great article. Short, to the point, and most importantly covers the ‘so what‘ question that should be asked after every announcement. Thank you. That means all the readers do not have to do a similar analysis, which makes us More productive and makes me want to continue to read this blog.
Would love to see a Hyatt transfer bonus. There is a lot of value in Hyatt stays.
Can’t imagine why anyone would consider bothering with this offer.