I like the ability to book airfare through the Chase portal with points vs. transferring points to United and other airlines.
The points you use for a flight or a hotel are directly related to the cash price.
A seat on United going to Maui from SFO is $623 in first class on 8/17 (flight I just booked a few weeks ago). No "Saver" award available. There are usually three of us flying, so we would never get three low-cost award seats from United (or Alaska).
One way flights are 90K miles directly with United for that flight. Transferring points to an airline could mean sitting on those points for a long time. Through the Chase portal, powered by Expedia, I booked that flight for 41,573 points. When I book it, it is as though I paid cash for it through Expedia, so United gives me points for that flight.
I stopped using our IHG hotel credit card. I just use it to get our one free hotel night per year. I book the hotels directly through the portal. For example, we just got back from Rawlins, WY two nights ago. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. The hotel was $150. That is only 10,000 miles through Chase. Holiday Inn wanted 30,000 points for that night. I would have to transfer 30,000 valuable miles to get that hotel room because I don't do any spend on the IHG card.
The spend we do on timeshare maintenance fees earns 3X points. We own a lot of timeshare because our daughter rents our Wyndham and Vistana timeshares and makes enough profit for herself to stay home with the kids. My profit is the travel I get from the points I use to pay fees. It adds up, plus 3X on restaurants and gas. I used to tell Rick to use the Costco card for gas, but then I realized we get more with Chase.
I still love my Hyatt card and use it for spend and will transfer points to Hyatt from Chase occasionally. We jsut stayed in a hotel in Boston that cost us 8K points and would have been $230. That is a good value and gave us breakfast. I have read that Hyatt is going to change things soon, and I am assuming they don't like that. IHG hotels are not superior at all and get 3-4X more points. It doesn't make sense.
I also rent cars with points through the portal. A $600 car rental is 40,000 points.
Too bad you didn't get the card at 100K points. We both got them. Such a great card.
The minute lounge in ATL was actually pretty nice for us last month. We arrived at the airport, and our plane was delayed by a few hours, so we got to stay in one of those for two hours, the two of us, at no cost at all. We could put our feet up and watch a little TV, but snacks all had a price tag, so we ate our own snacks.
We eat about six times per year at the Denver airport lounge, which is a restaurant called Timberline Steakhouse. They have the best burgers. We can take two guests for each card. Last year in May, we took all of the family with four of us having the cards, and so all 12 of us ate/drank at the restaurant FREE. We had three kids with us who also got $28, but kids' meals are about $6, so we ordered appetizers, and a few got wine, too. You just pay the tip. $28 per person goes a long way, when burgers are $12 with fries. We get soda pop and cheesecake, and we never owe anything. Everything there is so good. Our kids said the nachos would have been a meal for someone.