Finding and Booking Flights with Points

We've talked a lot about how to earn points - basic info and lingo, where to start, best beginner cards, elevated card sign up offers, travel partners (Chase, Amex, and Capital One), how to transfer points from the bank to a partner hotel or airlines as well as my personal rules of thumb for how many points you should expect to spend on a hotel or flight booking. 

However, the time consuming part of using points can often be figuring out how to redeem them. There are many variables (and rabbit holes) to consider, especially compared to using points for hotels. Knowing how to search for award (points) flights, and what a "good" points price is, is a fundamental skill to maximize your points travel.

This post will take a deep dive into how we actually search for flights to book with points and walk you through the process I generally follow. I warn you in advance, this post is looooong, because I want you to know and understand all of the details so that you can repeat the process by yourself. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via Instagram @justcallmehaha or email: justcallmehaha@gmail.com

Finding and Booking Flights with Points

Before going into detail, the general steps for searching and booking flights with points I follow are:

1. Determine Wants and Needs
2. Look up Routes/Airlines
3. Search for Flights 
4. Verify Award Flights Exist
5. Transfer Points and Book

These may seem obvious, but as with life, there are many different ways to come to the same results. My process varies a little, depending mostly on Item 1.

Step 1. Determine Wants and Needs

The more flexible you are with your wants and needs, the greater the chances of you finding award flights, often at the best price.

To increase flexibility, consider the following:

• Travel dates: do you have to fly in/out on a certain day? Or can you put some wiggle room in your itinerary; adding a day or two to your trip? Or even considering a less popular time of the year to travel?
• Airports: generally it's ideal to fly direct whenever possible; but are you willing to consider flying from your home airport to another airport before a long haul flight to get a better price? (This is called "repositioning"). Are you willing to take a direct flight from your home airport to Europe and then take a quick/cheap flight to your final destination?
• Seat Class: is a business flight your priority? Or getting there as quick and cheap as possible?
• Number of Seats: Award seats can be limited. Are you willing to break up your group and seat some in business and some in economy? Or would you rather fly in pairs on different flights to get better seats or pricing and meet at your destination?
• BOOK ONE WAY flights! I know, this is *not* what you usually hear. There's been recent news how one-way cash flights are more expensive than booking roundtrip; however in the world of points and miles - booking one-way flights increases flexibility and therefore your odds of finding better priced award flights. Points flights generally do not cost more when comparing one way verse round trip. (It often nearly impossible to find great points pricing roundtrip for international flights).

In addition, your Needs will also be dictated by how many points you have and which airlines you can use those points to book with. Take inventory of your points with each bank and each airline.

Keep in mind, all banks have airlines and hotels they partner with, and while there is some overlap (such as Air Canada and Flying Blue), sometimes the only way you can book a specific flight is if you book through an airline alliance. Of course, the easiest way is to have enough points available with a bank to transfer to a given airline to book directly; but often times, you may be able to book flights for less points if you book on an airline's alliance partner. This is why point diversification is SO important! And why my top 3 beginner cards list spans across multiple banks!

For example, Chase is the only bank who transfers to United; but if you don't have enough Chase points to book a United flight; can you find that same flight on other Star Alliance partners, like Air Canada? Then you can transfer Amex or Capital One points to Air Canada to book your United flight.

I'll talk about airline alliances more below.

Step 2. Look up routes/airlines flying

If I know where I want to go, the first place I start to research is Flight Connections. I know lot of other people who use Google flights - which can provide some of the same information: it will tell you what airlines fly where and the cash price for a given date. I prefer Flight Connections and I'll explain here what information I'm looking for and how I find it. I use the free version of this website to learn which routes and which airlines are available to get to my destination.

Flight Connection color codes their routes, so you can easily determine direct flight vs stopover routes. For example, when I simple input "Denver" as my origin, you can see on the left and on the map a variety of places I can fly to.

(if the picture is blurry, you can click on it to load clearly)

Direct Flights: Let's say I wanted to go to Paris, departing from Denver. Once I input Paris as my destination, on the left of the screen, it tells me that Air France is my airline option to fly Denver direct to Paris, from May to Oct.

With this information, I would then move on to Step 3 and search on Air France and Air France's alliance partner airlines websites for a points flight.

In-direct Flights: Let's say I wanted to go to Lisbon, departing from Denver. Once I input Lisbon as my destination, on the left of the screen, it tells me there are no direct flights but gives me a list of cities I can fly through. Even this information is helpful to start your flight searches - you don't want to drive yourself crazy looking for a direct flight when it doesn't exist!

If you select one of the Stopover cities, Flight Connections will then show you airline options to get from your origin to your stopover city and then your stopover city to your destination. In this example, I could fly Denver direct to Munich on United or Lufthansa and then I could fly TAP or Lufthansa to get from Munich to Lisbon.

An alternative to Flight Connections is looking up routes directly on an airport website or looking up an airport code on Wikipedia. 

Step 3. Search for flights 

Depending on what kind of information Flight Connections gives me and what my flexibility is, I will either start my searches directly on the airline I want to fly on and then branch out to the airline's partnership in their alliance that my points transfer to OR I will use a third-party search aggregator.

Searching Airline Websites/Apps

For the Direct Flight example above (Denver to Paris), I would search directly on Air France's website for a points flight.

For the Indirect Flight example above, I have a few options. I know that Lufthansa does not have a direct bank transfer partner. So I can't move my Chase, Amex, or Capital One points direct to Lufthansa to book. BUT, I do know that Lufthansa is in Star Alliance, along with United and Air Canada! So I could go to either United or Air Canada's website and search for award bookings for DEN > LIS and/or DEN > MUC, MUC > LIS to see what my options are

Airline Alliances

Now, as I mentioned above, there are also Airline Alliances, which are groupings of airlines that have partnered together to allow you to book one airline's flight through another airline. Why would you want to do this? Because different airlines charge different points prices and have charge differently for taxes and fees! Or maybe you have points in one bank that you want to use but you want to fly an airline who's not a direct transfer point. Lastly, maybe there's a transfer bonus in the alliance of a flight you need to book that you could take advantage

This is an entirely separate post on its own; but it is important to understand and remember when booking flights. Keep in mind - yes, this is overwhelming and a rabbit holes! It's an intermediate skill to understand how to utilize

Keep in mind different banks have different transfer partners and this is a huge reason to use Airline Alliances.

Third-Party Search Aggregators

A third-party aggregator is search tool that scans through multiple airline (or hotel) loyalty programs to report out flight availability bookable with points of miles. 

Popular flight aggregator websites include: Points.Yeah, Point.me, Roame.travel,and Seats.Aero

These sites have free versions with limitations and offer a paid subscription that allows you to filter to meet your needs and set up flight award alerts. I have used Points.Yeah for free award flight alerts. Points.me has a free version if you're an American Express card holder, Amex.Point.me - however it's results are limited to flights that you can book using only Amex points.

I personally prefer Seats. Aero and am willing to pay the $9.99/mo fee for the Pro version when I'm in search of flights. It's also easy to unsubscribe so that when I'm not in need to book point flights, I'm not paying for a service I'm not using.

Here's an example of a Seats.Aero search. From our earlier example this is Denver to Lisbon: 

You'll see the "Program" whom you would book with is American and Alaskan, Now Citi Banks transfer to American, but let's say you've just started in points and you're following my Beginner Card List. So far you only have Chase and Capital One points. We can filter "Transfer Partners" for only those banks. That way, the results you receive are actually bookable with the points you have.

In this case, we get Qantas and Turkish Air as our top results:

You may have never even heard of Qantas (an Australian based airline) and maybe you're thinking, why would I fly a Turkish airline to go from Denver to Lisbon?!

Well, for Qantas, you're not actually going to fly on Qantas. You're going to utilize the Oneworld Alliance, of which Qantas and American Airlines are members of you. You're going to click the "i" information button at the far right in the photo above, and receive the pop-up that you are actually booking an American Airlines flight, but booking through Qantas (who is a transfer partner with Amex, Capital One and Citi Bank. In our example, we have Chase and Capital One points, so we'd look to transfer Capital One points... but first, go to Step 4. Verification)

Note the "Book via" information below:

Pro's for Using Aggregators: Time saver! Instead of search individual airline websites one by one, you can have the website do the work for you. You can filter down results to meet your needs; such as the points systems you have, maximum duration of your flight travel, etc. These websites do the legwork for you, of searching through airlines and airline alliances, to identify the cheapest airline to book a flight with.

Con's for Aggregators: They are not always accurate! The data on their websites may not have refreshed and flights availability may not exist.... which takes us to the next step of Award Flight Searches

Step 4. Verify award flights exist

Before you move ANY points, you should do a "mock" booking to verify that what you want to book exists and that you know the exact points and cash price.

Go to the airline website that you want to book on, do a search for your exact dates, number of people, departure and origin cities, as well as seat class. 

This not only ensures that the flight is still bookable ("phantom flights" are known to appear in aggregator results, where a flight is shown but the availability to book does not actually exist); but this also ensures that you know exactly how many points you need to transfer from the bank to the airline to book.

From the example above with Seats.Aero flight from Denver to Lisbon; you would log into your Qantas account and verify that the flight search results Seats.Aero provided is actually a real bookable flight.

Reminder, here's what Seats Aero told us exists: 

And here's what Qantas search results yield; in this case Seats Aero was correct and we have verified the award flight exists. You can move on to Step 5!

Qantas Search Results

Step 5. Transfer Points to Airline and Book Immediately!

As soon you find a flight you want to book; make the move and transfer those points!

In the example above, you'd move your bank points to Qantas and book your American Airlines flight!

Keep in mind, that points generally can only be transferred in the thousands and that once you transfer points, it's irreversible. IE - if you transfer bank points to a hotel or airline, the points are then "stuck" in the airline or hotel's program and CANNOT be moved back to the bank.

While most point transfers are instant, some can take up to a few days. Be aware of this when finding award flights you want to book. You can always google "how long to a points transfer from X-Bank to X-airline take". Some airlines will hold your flight while you wait for points to transfer and others will not. It doesn't hurt to call and ask!

When transferring points from the Bank to an airline or hotel partner, the name on the bank credit card must identically match the name on the airline or hotel account (and should also match the name on one's passport!). Because of this, you can't take your Amex points and transfer them to your Player's 2 Air Canada account. 

Good to Know Tips

Here are a few more notes to consider when searching and using points to book flights.

Points Pricing Rules of Thumb: While you certainly will find flights priced higher than this, you can also find flights priced low than this amount of points also. Typically lower points costs can mean higher taxes and fees.

• Domestic flight, economy one way: 12,500 - 25,000 points

• International flight to Europe, economy, one way: 35,000-48,000 points* + taxes/fees**

• International flight to Europe, business class, one way: 65,000-80,000 points* + taxes/fees**

• International flight to Mexico, round-trip: 40,000-50,000 points + taxes/fees

*Note: being Denver-based, I use United as my basis of thought; however, you can often find much lower options if you're willing to do a positioning flight to fly out of another large hub airport. A positioning flight is a flight you take to for the sole purpose of getting to another airport to start your primary trip

**International Taxes/Fees vary depending on the airport. For Europe, London Heathrow (LHR), is known to have the highest taxes/fees; often 2-3X's the cost of EU airports

Virgin Air and Flying Blue (Air France/KLM), often are cost less points for flights, but can have higher taxes and fees.

You CAN book a flight for someone else. If someone in your household has points or miles, they can book a flight for you, even if they aren't on the reservation. So in the above Transfer Points section, I say you can't take your Amex points and transfer them to your Player 2's loyalty account... but you can book a flight with your points for someone else if you need to.

Summary
As promised, this is ALOT of information, that hopefully is all valuable and will help you learn how to turn your points into nearly free travel!

If you're overwhelmed, don't worry - that's natural. Earning points can be easy, but redeeming points and understanding how to redeem to spend as little points as possible, and/or maximize your point value is a skill that comes with time and practice!

If you have points you're ready to use to book, but don't have the time or patience to go down the rabbit hole of possibilities that is award flights, I'm happy to do the work for you! Check out my award booking intake form!

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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

Trying to figure out your next card? Here is my FREE personalized Next Card Recommendation form. Simply fill this out and I'll let you know suggestions.

Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!

Comparing Shopping Portals

I've shared before that in addition to earning credit card sign up bonuses, two other conscious methods I use to earn more points are:

1. Maximizing category spend (this post talks about my favorite everyday cards and maximizing category spend; which using the "right" card to earn more points on purchases like groceries, dining out, and all other purchases) 

2. Utilizing online shopping portals, like Rakuten

Now, generally speaking, the points earned from these methods are nowhere close to a sign up bonus; but at the same time - any and all extra points add up!

What's a Shopping Portal? 

As a refresher, an online shopping portal is a website or platform that acts as a gateway to online retailers, offering bonus rewards like cash back, airline miles or points, for purchases made through the shopping portal. 

How to Use Shopping Portals
Instead of going directly to a retailer's website, you visit the shopping portal first, search and click on a link to your retailer of choice, and then make your purchase from the retailers website. The portal tracks your purchase (but not your personal information like shipping address and/or credit card number), then credits your account with the bonus rewards offered.

There are dozens of options for shopping portals; from banks like Chase and Capital One, airlines like Southwest and American, and third party like Rakuten. In order to "remember" to use shopping portals, I've downloaded browser extensions, so that when I visit almost any shopping website, I get multiple pop-ups offering to activate a shopping portal.

For example, when I visit Gap, this is what happens; four pop-ups appear, all from different shopping portals, based on the web browser extensions I have downloaded for these specific shopping portals.

Payment Method

Keep in mind, when using a portal, you don't have to use a specific credit card to earn the points or cash back. Utilizing the shopping portal is earning ADDITIONAL points and/or cash back, in addition to any benefits earned from the specific card you're using to make a purchase.

For example, I can shop through Chase portal, but pay with an American Express card. I would then earn portal points from Chase AND purchase points on my American Express.

Comparing Shopping Portals

Now, generally speaking you can only use ONE shopping portal benefit for any given purchase. Naturally, you likely will want to use which ever portal is offering the highest value (unless you are trying to build points up for a specific bank or airline). Usually my goal is to get the most Chase points I can. While Chase has a "shop through Chase" portal (that I've been using for over 10 years!!), it still does not have a web browser extension, which means there's no pop-up for Chase. You simply have to remember.

This is where one of my favorite tools comes in: Cashback Monitor. This is a free website, that you can search any store and it automatically reviews all of the points and/or cash back shopping portals for the specific store. It does all of the comparison for you, so that you simply look at the options and pick which you want to use.

From our example above, searching Cashback Monitor for Gap, yields the results of:

Generally I prioritize Chase points, Bilt points, or American Express. You can earn Bilt points or American Express depending on how you set up your Rakuten account. In this case, both Chase and Rakuten are offering 2 points per dollar spent. I would then go to either Chase Shopping Portal or Rakuten to make my Gap purchase and earn 2 points per dollar.

Sometimes, there is a clear "winner", ie one shopping portal that offers a higher point yield than others; which makes it more obvious who to shop through for a given purchase. For example, lets say I was using Instacart to buy groceries (which we do for Costco purchases). Southwest is offering 1 point per dollar spent, Chase Freedom offers 2 points per dollar; but Rakuten offers 3 points per dollar, so I'm going to shop through Rakuten to make my purchase.

Keep in Mind

Shopping portal rates are fluid! They can change. What you see today may not be the same as a rate tomorrow. Sometimes there are promotions if you spend X-amount in a given time period, you can earn bonus points (I see this frequently with United and Southwest).

Or, Rakuten is known to have higher cash back/points earn for certain weeks or holidays. For example, over Presidents Day weekend, several websites that are usually 1-2 points per dollar where as high as 10-15 points!

Summary

Shopping portals add another step to online shopping; but at the same time, offer a convenient way to earn more points (or cashback) without spending more!

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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

Trying to figure out your next card? Here is my FREE personalized Next Card Recommendation form. Simply fill this out and I'll let you know suggestions.

Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!

Transfer Bonus Calculator (+Current Bonuses)

What is a Transfer Bonus?
Essentially - it's free points or miles!

Transfer bonuses are a limited time promotion where bank/partner programs will offer extra points to transfer your flexible bank points to a specific hotel or loyalty program. Banks frequently (sometimes monthly, sometimes sporadically) announce transfer bonuses, which means if you transfer points from the bank to the partner with the bonus, you’ll get more points for free with that partner, just for transferring! 

In order to take advantage of these bonuses, you need to transfer your flexible bank points to the travel partner with the bonus. Not familiar with how to transfer points or which hotels/airlines partner with which banks? You can learn how to transfer points here, Chase Transfer Partners here, American Express transfer partners here and Capital One's here. 

Keep in mind... once you transfer points, you cannot transfer them back to your bank. They are then "stuck" in whichever airline/hotel partner you transferred to. Transfers from banks to airline or hotel partners are irreversible.

It is NOT recommended to transfer points from a bank to a travel partner, just because there's a bonus. It's generally best to keep your points flexible until you're ready to book travel, at which point you then transfer out of the bank.

Current Transfer Bonuses

(As of 3/1/2026; these are subject to change/additional bonuses added)

American Express 

• No Transfer Bonuses at this time

Capital One

• I Prefer Hotels: this hotel group joined Capital One as a transfer partner back in Sept 2025 and currently has 30% bonus through 9:59PM ET, March 31, 2026. The standard transfer is 1:2 ratio; with this bonus it jumps up to 1 Capital One mile transfer to I prefer equals 2.6 I prefer points

Chase

• Aer Lingus: 20% bonus through 11:59PM ET, March 31st, 2026

• British Airways: 20% bonus through 11:59PM ET, March 31st, 2026

• Iberia: 20% bonus through through 11:59PM ET, March 31st, 2026

• Don't want or need to fly any of these airlines? Keep in mind Airline Alliances. With this transfer bonus, you may be able to book flights on other airlines in the same OneWorld Alliance as Alaska, American, or Qatar Airways.

• Plus all of these airlines use Avios and you can combine Avios amongst other Avios airlines, including Vueling and Finnair. Learn more here how I’ve used this transfer bonus AND Avios transferring to save on a flight. 

How Many Points to Transfer

To figure out how many points you NEED to transfer, you take the amount of points needs to book your flight/hotel and divide that number by the transfer bonus (in numerical form, the percent plus 1). So say you want to book a 50,000 point flight and there's a 20% transfer bonus. You would calculate 50,000 / (1.2) to figure out how many points you need to actually transfer. In this case, it calculates out to 41,667 points.

Most programs require you transfer points in 1,000 point increments, which means for our example, with a 20% transfer bonus, you'd transfer 42,000 points to book your 50,000 point travel.

Transfer Bonus Calculator

Instead of having to figure out the math; I've created a calculator that does the work for you!

JustcallmeHaHa's Transfer Bonus Calculator

Number of Points Required Transfer Bonus (%) Transfer Ratio 1:1 1:2 1:.75 1:.5 1:.6 1:1.6 1:.8

Number of Points Required: this is how many points you need to book your travel; the points price shown on the airline or hotel’s website where you will book

Transfer Ratio: most commonly this is 1:1. Meaning if you transfer 1,000 bank points to a travel partner, you'll get 1,000 points in the airline or hotel loyalty program.

However, some banks and travel partners don't have a 1:1 ratio. You can find the specific bank to transfer partner ratio when you are in the bank's Transfer to Partners/Transfer Rewards page. For example, for Capital One to Accor hotels, it shows 1,000 Capital One miles is equal to 500 Accor points. So for the Transfer Ration menu in the calculator you would select the "1:.5" option to align.

Summary

Have you taken advantage of transfer bonuses before? While I don't wait for a transfer bonus (when I have something I want to book, I book it!), but it sure is nice when a transfer bonus aligns with something that I need to book.

Save this page to use this calculator whenever you have a transfer bonus you want to utilize. I hope it helps you save some brain cells and some points!

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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

Trying to figure out your next card? Here is my FREE personalized Next Card Recommendation form. Simply fill this out and I'll let you know suggestions.

Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!

Chase Transfer Partners

With all of the attention Hyatt got this week, announcing changes to their award pricing, a new transfer partner has been added to Chase somewhat under the radar. 

While I don't think this is all that exciting, I wanted to be sure to update my list of Chase Transfer Partner Hotels and Airlines. Remember - airline and hotel partners vary across banks, with some overlap (Air Canada and Flying Blue), but often not (such as Hyatt, United, and Southwest). You can find American Express transfer partners here and Capital One's here. 

Chase Transfer Partner Hotels and Airlines

Why do you want to transfer your points verse book travel in the bank travel portal?

Typically, bank travel portals all you to book travel trading in 1 point for 1 cent. Granted, Chase does now offer Points Boost, where depending on the cards you hold and travel you want to book, you may get up to 1.65 cents per point of value.

However, generally speaking, when you transfer your points to partner hotels and airlines, you can book travel directly through those programs for LESS points. Using less points to book travel, means that you can travel more! Currently all of Chases transfer partners are a 1:1 ratio

This post walks you step by step how to transfer Chase points to a travel partner. Keep in mind, you need a "premium" (aka annual fee) Chase card to have the ability to transfer. My number one recommendation is the Sapphire Preferred, due to it's benefits and low annual fee; but these cards also provide the ability to transfer points to partners: Chase Sapphire Reserve, Ink Business Preferred, or Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business  If you don't have one of these cards, then your points are "stuck" in Chase and you only way to redeem is through the Travel Portal.

But, if you open one of these cards, you can then combine your points amongst accounts and transfer existing points out to partners too!

Hotels

Chase has four hotel partners that you can do direct points transfers to:

Chase Hotel Partners

Airlines

Chase has 10 airline partners that you can do direct points transfers to. (Emirates partnership ended in 2025)

Chase Airline Partners

Don't see your favorite airline above as a direct transfer partner? Keep in mind that airlines unite together and have formed alliances that allow you to cross book among alliance airlines. Therefore, if an airline you want to fly isn't listed above as a direct travel partner; through alliances, you may still be able to fly a specific airline, as long as you transfer to their alliance partner and see the flight in the alliance airline's search.

This post discusses airline alliances in more detail.

For example, you can't directly transfer points to Lufthansa, but Lufthansa is in Star Alliance, as is United. Therefore, you may be able to search United and come across a Lufthansa flight that you can book by transferring points to and booking with United.

Summary

Chase is my favorite bank and favorite flexible points because not only are their partners familiar domestic brand names you recognize, at the same time; they have other travel partners that you can use around the world!

Chase Ultimate Rewards are arguably the most valuable flexible points. You can earn them from a variety of Chase credit cards: Freedom Flex or Unlimited, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Ink Business Preferred, Ink Business Unlimited or Cash, or Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business 

Each of the links above will lead you to specific details on each card. If you want to open one of these cards, I would SO appreciate if you utilized my referral links to open cards. This doesn't cost you anything, but provides me with some extra points and keeps all of my content free! Thank you in advance!

Reminder, if you're viewing this through a Meta app, please open an external browser to apply. This protects your data and gives me credit. If you're interested in business cards, but want more information, as well as directions how to apply for them; read here!

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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

Trying to figure out your next card? Here is my FREE personalized Next Card Recommendation form. Simply fill this out and I'll let you know suggestions.

Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!

Hyatt Hype and 2026 Changes

Hyatt is THE favorite hotel chain of points enthusiasts; but why?!

Unlike other popular hotel chains (Hilton, Marriott, IHG), Hyatt has a standard award chart for pricing. What does this mean?

It mean that other hotel chains price their award stays (aka point stays) based on the cash price. As we know, cash prices of travel fluctuate all.the.time. There often is no maximum on the amount of points that these hotels charge. For example, the popular high-end Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedegral charges as high as a whooping 250,000 points per night (booked through Hilton) and that doesn't even include food/drinks!

Whereas, as of today, the maximum point price you'll pay for top luxury level Hyatt is 45,000 points per night! But sadly.... that's about to change

Hyatt 2026 Changes

On February 25, 2026, Hyatt announced changes coming to the award chart. Now - it's not uncommon for hotels and airlines to announce changes to redemption rates annually. For Hyatt this usually comes in the form of moving hotels from one category level to another (up or down); which in effect changes the points price.

However, up until now, Hyatt Award Charts had 3 pricing scales for any given hotel: Off-Peak, Standard, and Peak. Today, Hyatt shared that they are moved to 5 pricing scales, which essentially is a means to charge more points but maintain a standardized award chart. It's not a good change.

Hyatt Hotel Award Charts

Based on the chart below, you'll see there is a large variance for hotel pricing. Want to book a Hyatt Place? If it's category one, it will cost you anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000 points per night?

Want to go to Hawaii and stay at the amazing Grand Hyatt Kauai? Currently it's a Category 8 hotel. If you want to go for Winter or Spring Break, you can expect to pay the Top price of 75,000 points a night. OUCH! With the current award chart the maximum peak pricing is only 45,000 points a night. This is a big blow!

2026 Hyatt Standard Hotel Award Chart

Hyatt All Inclusive Award Chart

Similar to standard hotels, Hyatt also has a number of all inclusive properties. These AI's have their own award chart and are categories as Levels A-F. 

2026 Hyatt All-Inclusive Award Chart

Hyatt Tips and Tricks

Now that I've covered the bad news; let's talk more about why Hyatt still remains to be a fan favorite and some tips/tricks you can use to book Hyatts for less points

Resort Fees

Any Hyatt stay booked on points does not pay a daily resort fee! This in itself can be a huge savings of $85/day or more (depending on the specific hotel and amenities offered)

Availability/Award Calendar

Two tips to mention here. If you do a search on Hyatt for a stay and receive results that there is No Point Availability, it may just be that one night of all the nights you want to stay isn't available.

See that "View Points Calendar" button? This is a newer Hyatt feature and while it's sometimes clunky (it doesn't work well in Hyatt app), it can be a nice tool to use because it shows you which nights in a calendar view are available to book for points. You can use the Points Calendar to adjust your dates/search to align. In this example below, I say I want to do a 3-night stay and the calendar shows me which dates are available to check-in to get a 3-night point stay:

Book Single Nights

This is a common strategy amongst point enthusiasts, especially for popular hotels at popular travel dates. Basically, most Hyatts generally release their award booking calendar ~13mo/395 days in advance. What you can do is book a one-night reservation 13mo in advance, as your date is released, to ensure availability to book (rather than waiting for the entire duration of your stay to be released). Then, once you have all of the individual one-night bookings made for the total duration of your stay, you can contact Hyatt to link/combine the reservations into one. This works - as long as you book identical room types for each night.

I like to follow this technique because at 13months in advance, flights aren't out yet! "Overbooking" a number of one-night reservations gives me more flexibility to figure out flights. For example, say next winter break we wanted to go to Hawaii after Christmas (Dec 26/Jan27). At roughly Thanksgiving 2025 time frame I would have started booking one-night Hyatt stays. If I wanted to stay in Hawaii for 6 nights total, I might have booked 8 one-night stays, which gives me flexibility on either end to cancel some of the one-night reservations, once I figured out my flights/travel dates.

All-Inclusives

I mention this in my Rules of Thumb for Point Cost post, but it's worth noting again here! When booking all-inclusive hotel, the standard point pricing (ie what's shown in the chart above) is for 2 room occupants. When you add more than 2 people to your search, the points price will increase - even double! 

For all-inclusives, Hyatt considers age 13+ as an adult. If you're traveling with kids 12 and under, instead of doubling the amount of points you're going to spend - consider paying the daily cash rate to add your kids!

You can book the reservation with 2 adults only (although ensure your room type can accommodate your total number of travelers, adults + children) and pay the daily cash rate to add children.

After you have a reservation, you can call and add in the children saying you want to pay cash. With this approach, instead of using points, you'll pay roughly $80-$130/child/day (depending on the specific hotel. You can do a World of Hyatt chat to ask the rate) to add in the all inclusive package.

Brand Explorer

Hyatt has over 20 brands of hotels under their portfolio. The Brand Explorer Award encourages you to stay at different Hyatt brand hotels and for every unique brand you stay at, you get a credit. For every 5 credits you get, you earn a Level 1-4 Free Night! This is a GREAT way to earn a free night certificate for a Level 1-4 Category hotel. This is also known at Hyatt Bingo!

Here's what my bingo card currently looks like. I stragetically booked a "Hyatt" brand hotel for a trip in April, so that I'll earn my second Free Night award

What's nice is there there isn't a time frame you have to complete the 5 stays. It's cumulative. But, once you stay a brand hotel, you won't get future credits if you stay at the same brand again. 

If you've done any Hyatt stays with a free World of Hyatt loyalty account linked, then you can check the status of your own Brand Explorer in your Hyatt profile:

Hyatt Awards

This leads me to Hyatt Awards. Like many hotel chains, Hyatt allows you to earn Milestone Rewards based on the number of nightly stays you have and/or the number of points you earn through spend at Hyatt and/or on Hyatt Credit Cards.

You can find all of the details here, but Milestone Rewards start at 20 nights a year. The rewards aren't amazing at this level, but they're still something!

Hyatt Status

Hyatt currently has 3 status levels: Member (no status), Discoverist (10 nights), Explorist (30 nights), and Globalist (60nights). This chart compares the Benefits of each level:

Globalist is the top tier status, which includes free breakfast for 2 adults and 2 children and/or Club Access (free food, discounted/free drinks, etc. Not all hotels have a Club), room upgrades including suites, highest point earn on eligible purchases (30%), and free parking on points nights.

Now, I am not going to hit Globalist. We did (strategically) hit 30 nights in 2025, which got us Explorist status. I could have pursued opening Hyatt Credit cards to fill the "gap" by earning qualifying points to get us to Globalist status through spend. However, even though I'm a devout Hyatt person, I like to keep our points flexible and therefore first focus our spend on earning flexible/transferable bank points.

BUT, one of my favorite Hyatt Awards is a Guest of Honor!

Guest of Honor Award

A Guest of Honor award, aka, GOH, is an award that you can earn (for 40 night stay) or be gifted (from other Globalists), which granted you "temporary Globalist status" for the stay you apply it to.

This means, you get to utilize all of those perks mentioned above. We have used GOHs around the world and saved THOUSANDS of dollars thanks to you! Free breakfast is huge - especially places like Hawaii and Maldives or as a family of 4 - when a hotel breakfast easily costs more than $100/day. Plus free parking is a great perk! In large cities, this can save you $60+/day.

How do I get my GOHs? I trade! I take my Free Night Awards I earn (see Brand Explorer above as one option) and I go on Hyatt Award Exchange Facebook groups to trade. Generally I can trade one Level 1-4 Free Night Award for 2-3 Guest of Honor awards.

When booking our trips for the year, I always take into consideration and plan out how I can maximize value using my GOHs.

Summary

Once again, this is a lot of material to cover - but provides oversight as to why Hyatt is so popular among points people!

Hyatt's standard award chart and Guest of Honor awards are my favorite reason to keep booking Hyatts. Keep in mind, Chase and Bilt are the only Hyatt transfer partners, which is why I try to save those points for Hyatt and use my other bank stashes to book flights!

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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.

Trying to figure out your next card? Here is my FREE personalized Next Card Recommendation form. Simply fill this out and I'll let you know my suggestions.

Wondering how I keep all of this information organized? Check out my Points Tracker!

Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!