Maximizing the Chase Sapphire Reserve in San Francisco
Tl;dr: The Reserve offers lounge access, concierge service, and access to fully refundable economy and business class tickets through Ultimate Rewards.
I’m a big fan of the “get a new card, fly internationally for free” approach to credit cards, but what if you want to keep it simple? Well, the Chase Sapphire Reserve is the ultimate keep-it-simple card, with its great earning rates, travel perks, shopping protections, and easy-to-use travel portal bonus. The annual fee is a bit hefty, though, so I would want to take full advantage of the CSR’s potential. Certain cards can be stronger or weaker depending on the market, so today I’m looking at the best ways to use the Chase Sapphire Reserve and redeem Ultimate Rewards points in San Francisco.
Card Perks
Lounge Access. The most substantial benefit of the Reserve for frequent flyers is access to airport lounges. Although Chase’s own Sapphire Lounge collection is fairly limited, the Reserve comes with Priority Pass membership (sign up required) and their extensive collection of worldwide lounges. This has recently become much more valuable for San Franciscans with the addition of The Club SFO, a domestic-side lounge to complement the three international-side lounges already available at the San Francisco airport. There are also two Priority Pass lounges at the airport in San Jose.
Visa Infinite Concierge. Concierge services can be hit or miss, but they can help you book travel or make restaurant reservations (perhaps including some that might not otherwise be available). This service is particularly valuable when traveling abroad, as they may be able to have a local agent contact restaurants to make a reservation in a foreign language that you might not be able to do on your own.
Roadside Assistance. The CSR includes roadside assistance coverage up to $50, up to four times per year, which can include towing, tire changes, jump starts, and delivery of two gallons of fuel if you run out of gas.
Global Entry Credit. The Reserve offers a statement credit of up to $120 every four years to cover the cost of Global Entry or TSA Precheck membership.
Travel benefits. The Reserve has excellent travel protections, such as rental car damage insurance, trip delay reimbursement, trip cancellation and interruption insurance, baggage delay insurance, and lost luggage reimbursement.
Shopping protections. Was there a problem with your purchase? The CSR offers return protection (reimbursement if you can’t return an item), purchase protection (reimbursement for theft of or damage to a recent purchase), and extended warranty (extended the manufacturer’s coverage by up to a year).
Lyft Pink. With the CSR, you can get two years of Lyft Pink, the rideshare’s premium membership that includes free priority pickup, among other things. (It’s $199/year, so be sure to set a reminder to cancel before it auto-renews at that rate!) The Reserve also earns 10x points per dollar on Lyft rides through March 2025.
DashPass. Reserve cardholders can activate DashPass for one year to receive $0 delivery fees and lower service fees on eligible orders.
Expansive 3x “Travel” Bonus. The Reserve earns 3x on “travel,” which Chase defines broadly. This means you can earn 3x on day-to-day expenses like tolls, parking meters and garages, and public transit.
Booking Travel
Reserve cardholders can redeem their points for 1.5¢ each on Chase’s travel portal, an excellent redemption rate with the added benefit of incredible versatility–you can get 1.5¢ worth of value per point on any flight, with any airline, in any class of service, or at any hotel anywhere in the world, as long as it’s bookable via Chase (you will want to make sure the price matches the best available price, but it usually does).
Personally, I calculate point values conservatively, comparing the cost of a flight or hotel to the cheapest cash option, a process that makes it hard for points to net more than about 1.3¢ in value. However, looking at Chase’s transfer partners, even with more aggressive calculations it seems extremely difficult to beat the portal’s great 1.5¢/pt value. However, there are a few options.
Hyatt
Hyatt points are the most valuable mainstream points or miles in the industry, and will usually be worth at least 2¢ per point.
Because there are usually tons of options to find a cheap hotel in cash, I usually prefer to save my points for flights. However, Hyatt points provide such great value that it can make sense to use them.
For example, when I go to DC, I prefer to save money by staying at a hotel on the outskirts of the city but easily accessible by Metro, like the Hyatt Place near Dulles. This hotel is a 3 minute walk to the Metro that connects directly to Dulles and downtown DC. A five-night stay in early December would cost $564 or $715 for a fully refundable stay, but costs just 22,000 Hyatt points, for a value of 2.5 or 3.2¢ per point.
Hyatt points can also deliver great value on luxury hotels. I ran a few searches for March 2025, and the Park Hyatt Vendrôme Paris can be booked for 45k points per night, a 4¢ per point value given that hotel’s $1,786 nightly rate. The Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars can be had for a more manageable 17k per night, a solid 3.9¢/pt rate on a $656 cash price. And the Hyatt Centric Ginza in Tokyo costs 21k points per night, good for 3.6¢/pt on a $760 per night hotel.
These points can be useful and deliver great value if you’re looking for luxury stays, but you will often have cheaper cash options, so I personally prefer to save my points for flights.
Avios (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Qatar, Vueling)
Avios are a shared rewards currency of several airlines, and can be transferred freely among the participating airlines. Chase points can be transferred to Avios via Aer Lingus, British Airways, and Iberia. From SFO, you can book round-trip nonstop flights to Tokyo and back in JAL business class for 150k points and about $500 in taxes and fees (if you can find availability). These flights cost about $4800-6200 in cash, meaning that redemption would value the points at about 2.8-3.8¢ each. You can fly ZipAir for about $3000 (1.6¢/pt), but JAL is a significantly better experience than ZipAir, so this does provide meaningful value.
United
United offers regular “featured deals,” mostly in economy. The benefits of transferring Chase points to United are United’s low taxes and fees on award flights and the ability to cancel reservations and get your cash and miles back.
However, the redemption rates are only okay, at best. As of a few days ago, the sale fares included Honolulu for about 26k round trip, Cancun for 30k, Singapore for 84k, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Tokyo for 100k, and Shanghai for 110k. I didn’t run cash comparisons for every flight, but a full economy ticket to Tokyo runs about $1300, fully refundable around $1600, so booking this way yields a value of about 1.4-1.6¢ per point at best.
United does offer business class flights to Europe for about 160k miles plus $150 round trip. The cash cost of these exact flights can be $6000 or more, leaving the potential for 3-4¢ per point in value. However, business class flights to Europe can easily be found for $3000 or less, dropping the true value to closer to 1.4-1.6¢ per point.
Aeroplan, FlyingBlue, Virgin
The same more or less holds true for Air Canada, Air France, KLM, and Virgin.
Flying Blue offers the opportunity for award deals, like through their monthly promos. When I searched their program the other day via Roame, the only decent flight I could find was a round trip from SFO to Dublin in business class for 120k miles and $558 in taxes and fees. That was on an Air France and a KLM flight, a $5,235 ticket, good for 3.9¢ per point in value. But the same flight is also available on SAS (a perfectly fine option) for less than $2,500. So if you were going to fly to Dublin, you’d probably be better off transferring the points to FlyingBlue to enjoy the premium experience than spending 165k Chase points (and no cash) to book the SAS ticket, but it’s also probably a stretch to say those FlyingBlue points are “worth” $5,000 when you could fly the same route for half the price if paying cash.
You can book business class flights to Europe and back for 70k points plus ~$100 each way via Aeroplan. However, these flights cost only about $2500 via SAS, leaving a value of about 1.6¢ each, only slightly better than booking through the portal.
Likewise Virgin. I couldn’t find any easy roundtrips via Virgin, but you could fly from SFO to Paris for 78k Virgin points plus $150, then fly back from Vienna, Geneva, Turin, or Barcelona for 78k points plus $250, all on Air France. That itinerary costs around $5,000 on Air France itself (2.9¢/pt), but is available on SAS for around $2,600 (1.4¢/pt).
Singapore
If you can snag a business class seat (every date I tried was waitlisted), they can be had for about 214k KrisFlyer miles and $74 in cash. That’s a substantial points outlay, but on a $4,000 ticket, it represents about 1.8¢ per point in value.
JetBlue
Jetblue points are worth about 1.3-1.6¢ each, so it is conceivable to get some extra value by transferring points to JetBlue, but it’s unlikely, and a dangerous game given JetBlue’s limited network, especially out of SFO.
Others
Chase points can also be transferred to IHG, Marriott, Southwest, and Emirates, but it is extremely unlikely that any of these would ever offer more than 1.5¢/pt in value.
Conclusion
The Chase Sapphire Reserve has an excellent suite of luxury perks, travel protections, shopping protections, excellent points earning rates, and excellent points values when booking through its travel portal. That standard-issue feature makes it extremely difficult to wring any extra value from Chase’s transfer partners. However, it’s not impossible, and with well-timed deals, transfer bonuses, Hyatt stays, or business class flights, it’s possible to wring a little extra value from those precious Ultimate Rewards points.