Skip to content

Is a Chase Travel devaluation coming?

September 23, 2024: Last week, Chase changed the marketing language used to advertise the new cardmember welcome bonuses on two of its premium cards. The bank is no longer advertising the dollar value of using the points toward travel redemptions with Chase Travel℠. Could this mean a devaluation is coming?

Before the change: A stated dollar value of rewards

Previously, both the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve® offered sign-up bonuses that contained language about the value of your points when you redeemed them through Chase Travel℠. This language has now been removed from most sites.

Google’s cached search results still contain links to sites with the old language:

Screenshot of Google results showing Chase Sapphire Preferred welcome offers stating that 60,000 points are worth $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel
Screenshot of Google search results showing the old marketing language.

But now, the welcome bonus marketing language doesn’t mention that value when you redeem your points through Chase Travel. Here’s what shows up at Chase.com. Note that only the amount of points is mentioned, not the value when you redeem through Chase Travel:

Screenshot from Chase.com showing the 60,000 point Chase Sapphire Preferred offer without the language about points being worth a certain amount toward Chase travel.
Screenshot of the Chase Sapphire Preferred offer on Chase.com, taken September 23, 2024

What does this mean? Likely nothing immediately.

Given that Chase has promoted the fact that you can get 1.25 cents per point when you redeem your points through Chase Travel with your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or your Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card and 1.5 cents per point when you redeem your points through Chase Travel with the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, I imagine that they would have a very hard time walking away from those redemption options in the near term.

If they changed travel redemptions through their travel portal to be worth anything less than they advertised, they would have a lot of unhappy customers. For most people, redemptions through Chase Travel℠ represent the easiest high-value use of Ultimate Rewards® points…and changing the value proposition on that redemption would be a huge blow to the program.

Remember: Programs can and do devalue. Use your points

Although we don’t think that there is any imminent change coming to Chase Ultimate Rewards or the ways you can redeem your points, Chase’s subtle marketing change should serve as a reminder that programs can devalue at any time.

Miles and points are not cash and the value you can get from them is completely dependent on what the airline/bank/hotel program wants to offer you for your points at the time you redeem them. We know plenty of people who built up stashes of frequent flyer miles in the 1990s and 2000s, only to see their options for redemptions slashed in the 2010s. And programs can even vanish, as anyone who collected Air Berlin Topbonus points can tell you.

Bottom line: Earn your points, but don’t hoard them

Chase updated its marketing language on some of its premium Ultimate Rewards cards last week to remove the reference to the value you can get from Chase Travel. While that isn’t necessarily an indication that anything is happening soon, it serves as a reminder that rewards programs can be devalued at any time.

Don’t hoard your points.

About the author

  • Aaron Hurd

    Aaron Hurd is a credit card, travel rewards, and loyalty program expert. Over the past 15 years, he has authored over a thousand expert contributions published by leading outlets including WSJ, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, NerdWallet, The Points Guy, Bankrate, CNET, and many others. He has also served in consulting roles for many of these same outlets, designing content strategy, hiring teams of teams of editors and contributors, developing thought-leadership pieces, and ghost-editing for senior editors. Aaron is well-known in the miles and points community and regularly presents about travel rewards at conferences like the Chicago Seminars and Minnebar. Aaron has enjoyed the game of optimizing credit card rewards since getting his first credit card shortly after he turned 18. He started learning about credit cards and travel rewards from the (now defunct) FatWallet Finance forums and FlyerTalk. He holds more than 40 open credit cards and has first-hand experience with almost every major credit card product.

    View all posts