Originally posted September 2020; Updated June 2021

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Check out the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and earn 60,000 points.

Summer is creeping into fall, and you know what that means: It’s time to start planning your next trip to Mexico. (No? Just me?)

Here’s the deal: I’ve extensively covered the Hyatt Zilara in Cancún before. We’ve been three times in two years, every single time subsidized by our Chase points converted to Hyatt points. Sometimes I feel guilty ordering my fourth free swim-up bar mojito, since I’ve never given the resort a dime – then I remember the #werk that went into acquiring all the points.

In the the time since my original rave review of Zilara was published, I’ve had several people reach out and let me know they duplicated our trip – Sapphire Preferred card > Hyatt points > Hyatt Zilara. Bada bing, bada boom. But one thing that comes up consistently is: How do I transfer the points?

“Transferring your points to an airline or hotel” is a phrase we throw around a lot when talking about travel rewards, but I realize it’s not the most obvious thing in the entire world. A full breakdown of where you can transfer your Chase points is here, but today I want to get into the Hyatt process specifically.

Why Hyatt?

In short, because Hyatt is the only hotelier worth transferring points to. IHG Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy are both excellent rewards programs, but their points are worth a lot less than Chase Ultimate Rewards points. It almost would never make sense to do a 1:1 transfer of Chase points to any hotelier except for Hyatt.

Let’s get to know Hyatt really quickly. Here’s an overview of their portfolio:

And here’s Hyatt’s own breakdown of these brands, explaining the #vibes. The other thing I like about Hyatt is that even the properties they consider “lower scale” in their portfolio are still pretty nice. I have yet to stay in a Hyatt that I was unimpressed by.

Contextualizing the redemption value

In travel rewards, context is everything – especially when the Hyatt credit card’s sign-up bonus is 50,000 points compared to, say, an IHG Premier credit card that offers 125,000. You’ve probably gathered by now that all points are not created equal.

This is the Hyatt redemption chart. I realize there’s a lot going on here, so just pay attention to the first two columns (Category and Standard Room).

Stare, nod, and pretend that this glorified Excel spreadsheet is rocking your world.

Honestly, it kind of should – I was curious what constituted a “Category 1, 5,000 points/night redemption.” After all, that seems like an incredible deal when you get 50,000 just for signing up for their credit card (or transferring 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points).

It’s effectively all the Hyatt House and Hyatt Place properties in lower cost-of-living cities. Here’s the full list, if you’re curious. I clicked around a little more and noticed that there are still a fair bit of Hyatt House and Hyatt Place properties in, say, Category 3 – but they’re in places like Los Angeles and New York.

And to be clear, not even all Category-level redemptions are created equal! For example, the Grand Hyatt in San Antonio is a Category 3 as well. (The Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt brands are among the swankiest that Hyatt offers.)

To the business of transferring Chase points to Hyatt

By now, you’re probably (at least a little) convinced that Hyatt redemption values are pretty solid, as far as hotels go. And if you’re not, consider the following from Hilton:

The Double Tree and Hampton Inn & Suites brands are (what I’d consider to be) in the same camp, fanciness-wise, as the Hyatt House and Hyatt Place, give or take – and yet they cost between 37,000 and 42,000 points per night in LA. Remember, the Category 3 Hyatt properties in LA were 12,000 per night.

Of course, this example is hardly fair since you can’t even transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Hilton and the Hilton sign-up bonuses are far fatter, but I like drama so I figured this example painted a pretty decent picture of the concept that Hyatt is a fantastic redemption value.

So let’s talk about how to transfer your points. The first step, obviously, is getting yourself some points – and the easiest (cheapest) way to get 100,000 immediately is by signing up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

After spending $4,000 in three months on the card, you’ll be blessed with a 100,000-point sign-up bonus for the low, low price of a $95 annual fee. I can’t say enough good things about this card. It’s truly a no-brainer to me.

And if you really wanted to double-down on Hyatt and you aren’t nearing the Chase 5/24 rule (that says Chase will only approve you for 5 cards in 24 months), you could get the Hyatt card (50,000 points), too, and ostensibly have 110,000 Hyatt points by the time it’s all said and done.

So let’s pretend you’ve got your Sapphire points. You’re ready to rock. Let’s go to Cancún. (The Zilara is used as the transfer example here, but at the bottom of this post, I’ll highlight an even more incredible redemption in NYC that really illustrates why points transfers are so valuable.)

Confirm that the Hyatt redemption rate is actually better than the rate in the Ultimate Rewards portal

I like the Zilara because it’s all-inclusive. The Grand Hyatt in Playa del Carmen (an objectively fancier property) is also 25,000 points per night, but food and drinks aren’t included – half the fun of a beach vacation for someone like me is eating and drinking without worrying about how much it costs. 24-hour free room service doesn’t hurt either.

Good work, detective. It probably goes without saying, but another thing to confirm before making the transfer is that the 25,000 points/night Standard Room is available on the dates you want to travel – the upgraded suite is available for 40,000, usually, but double-check that the standard has availability for your preferred trip time. This goes for any property.

Having confirmed that your hotel is a better value with Hyatt directly, it’s time to make the transfer. First things first: Make a Hyatt account if you don’t already have one.

It’s a pretty easy and straightforward application, but the member number they’ll assign you is a string of numbers with a letter at the end and it’s easy to forget – so make sure you write it down, because you’re about to need it.

Now that you’ve entered into the illustrious World of Hyatt, it’s time to figure out how many points you need to transfer. I recommend only transferring the exact number of points you need. In this example, it’s probably going to be 50,000 (because you’ll have around 64,000 Sapphire points from the acquisition bonus and your initial spend, and Zilara costs 25,000 points/night).

Head back to your Chase account and click on the area where it shows you how many points you have. It’ll take you to a page that looks like this:

You’re doing great. Once you click “Transfer to Travel Partners,” you’ll be taken to a list. Now, all you have to do is find Hyatt and connect your brand-spankin’ new World of Hyatt member information.

From here, it’s pretty simple. You enter the number of points you want to transfer and go. On the next screen, you can confirm (for Hyatt, or anyone else) the value of the point transfer. Make sure it’s 1:1, which means your Ultimate Rewards points won't be halved (or worse) on the way over. You want it to be 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points = 50,000 Hyatt points.

Enter 50,000 and go!

You’ll get a series of confirmation emails and receipts, and then you can navigate back to your Hyatt account to see all your points.

What to do if the points aren’t there immediately

Usually, the Hyatt transfer is instantaneous – when I did this the first time, they were (thankfully) there immediately. When we did this with Thomas, it took a few days to show up. Don’t panic. As long as you have your confirmation emails from Chase that the points transfer happened, you should be covered.

Give it 48 hours, and if you still can’t see them in your account, you can call Hyatt to confirm that the transfer made its way successfully.

Now all that’s left to do is book your face-meltingly incredible vacation. You can replicate this process for any Hyatt property, but remember, the first and most important step is making sure it’s a better deal in the Hyatt portal than in the Ultimate Rewards portal.

Another outstanding example

Of course, I’ll always be the biggest Zilara fan girl, so I love using it as an example – but in researching this post, I found an even more mind-blowing example. I give you: The Park Hyatt in Manhattan.

Using our handy equation, we can see that this makes every point worth more than 3 cents. This is an outstanding redemption value, when you consider Chase points are generally valued at 1.5 cents.

To make matters more dramatic, look at how much this same property for the same weekend costs in the Chase portal:

See? Thank goodness you checked in Hyatt first; otherwise, you’d be spending more than double the amount of points.

There you have it, folks – two great reasons to transfer your points to Hyatt (or get a Hyatt credit card).

See you next time!

Check out the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and earn 100,000 points.

Editor’s Note: Opinions expressed here are mine alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included in the post.