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Don’t mess with Millennials and FOMO (fear of missing out) for travel adventures. According to a survey from the travel site Contiki, 1,500 Millennials said they’d give up Netflix, caffeine, alcohol, and even sex, all for the sake of travel. Experiences over things — am I right?
Chase Ultimate Rewards Steps It Up
If you’re a Chase customer and haven’t fully checked out what they have to offer right now, put your FOMO aside. It starts with being able to actually see what you can get. The Chase Ultimate Rewards® points navigation bar is easy to use. It’s the best way to poke around and see what they’re offering.
You can look through deals, like getting more points on certain gift cards or take advantage of discounts.
The best part is being able to see how it relates to me. How much can I spend with my points? For example, the deal of the day is at Nordstrom, where I can spend $429 with the points I currently have.
1. View your personalized, points-related data.
Call me a data nerd, but I get the warm fuzzies being able to see where my money is going and how I’m earning points.
Chase Ultimate Rewards shows you a breakdown of spending categories and where your money went. It also shows you how many points you’ve earned. It’s broken down for you in a digestible, easy-to-understand pie chart.
The data provided is a great tool to help you understand how your spending relates to earning points. You can also find out how to earn even more points.
2. Spend your Chase Ultimate Rewards points on experiences.
Chase’s Experiences are a mix of upcoming concerts, shows, food events, movie tickets, and even car purchases.
You can filter by location. When I did a search for the San Francisco area, I saw tickets to a Golden State Warriors Suite Night and Championship Trophy Visit. The cost? A cool 80,000 points. If you want to pay cash, it costs $800.
You can also search through other cities. Just to give you an idea, I found the following events:
- Tracy Morgan at the Beacon Theater in NYC
- Hip Hop House Party Tour in Chicago
3. Travel-related content based on your upcoming flights.
In addition to being able to spend your points on experiences, Chase has improved the quality of their content in their Travel News. I scrolled through recent articles including “Top Hotels in New Zealand” and “Why You Should Go to Hokkaido in the Winter.”
It’s obvious Chase is showing me highly curated pieces of content based on previous and upcoming flights booked through Ultimate Rewards.
While I can’t say their editorial section is comparable to the likes of Lonely Planet or Travel Leisure, it’s still convenient to be able to see relevant content.
Destination Travel
Just like you’d check out TripAdvisor to see what to do in a particular city, Chase shows you events happening in a specific place.
It’s called Destination Travel. You can read about what to do at a particular destination (there are over 160).
Note: You’ll have to take this section with a grain of salt though, many events weren’t up-to-date — I clicked on Hawaii Book & Music Festival and it was expired.
4. Partnerships with big brands like Apple and Amazon.
Chase partners with various brands and may offer you discounts or easy ways to use your points to make purchases. While these aren’t steep discounts, it’s a nice added perk since they’re giving you something. Which, I say, is always better than nothing.
Use Your Chase Ultimate Rewards Points for Chase Ultimate Rewards Perks
Amazon Purchases
Who doesn’t have a steady stream of Amazon boxes being shipped to their house? Amazon lovers, you can use your points directly for purchases.
Apple products
You can redeem your points for the latest Apple laptops and iPads. Unfortunately for me, $379 isn’t enough to get me anything I newly wanted at Apple!
Bottom Line
In the very near future, I expect that Chase will expand their partnerships with just about every brand out there. Foreseeable offers include a much larger bonanza of travel-related deals, experiences, and more ways to easily spend your points.