Tuesday, June 24, 2025

How Does The New Chase "Points Boost" Work

 


Part of the new refreshed Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card is the "Points Boost" bonus in the travel portal. The "Points Boost" is replacing the fixed bonus 1:1.5. But we noticed that the points boost is also live in the portal for existing Chase Sapphire Preferred card holders where the fixed bonus was 1:1.25 points. Reserve card holders as of June 22nd 2025 will still have the fixed bonus through October 25th 2025. In theory, you should be offered the better bonus offer.

So how does it work? It went live today and here's what we found. 


When you click on the travel portal and enter your search criteria, the first thing you see is a banner with "Points Boost" offers applied. I entered a search for hotels near Seattle Tacoma Airport in my Chase Sapphire Preferred account. These two hotels were offered to me with the points boost bonus which appears to be approximately  1.5 value of points. 


When you open the map view, you see little rocket icons next to the hotels where the points boost has been applied. I was happy to see that the majority seem to have the rocket icon. I clicked on the $169 to see the offer. The portal points out that the boost has increased this offer to better than the usual 1:1.25 value. 


Then I clicked on the travel portal in my Chase Sapphire Reserve account and entered the same search for hotels near Seattle Tacoma Airport to see the difference. 
Here's what it gave me:


It returned the same banner, but this time with point booster offers on Edit hotels in the area. The Chase Sapphire Reserve comes with a $500 credit ($250 every 6 months) for Edit hotels booked in the portal so that makes sense and can help you decide whether to use your credit or points.  



When I open the map, there are less options near the airport, but the $169 hotel is on there. 



But you can see the points boost offers are better than when I accessed the portal with the Sapphire Preferred. The boost does not appear to be a full 2x though. 
Points boost promised up to 2x. 

I also tried searching for flights. The points booster showed up primarily for business and first class flights in a banner across the top. 


On a different search, the banner offered me a variety of fares with the points boost. Again, first or business was offered at a better points boost than the economy plus fare on the same flight and the price difference was only $6. 


If I scrolled down though, some flights had points booster rocket icons next to various fare rates, but I couldn't figure out why some flights were targeted for a boost. Again, you can see on this search that the points needed for the first class fare end up being less than economy even though the flight is priced higher. 

At this point, you might want to check any reservations you already have booked to see if you get a better offer and can rebook. Just be careful if the original reservation is non refundable or offers you a credit. 
We will have to wait and see how the points booster evolves.


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