Originally Posted by
Will Martin
Hello, I am just starting to earn points to take my family on a trip to Europe in 2019. I signed up for SPG and am about to hit the spend on that. I just signed up for Chase ultimate rewards. These cards have an annual fee that is waived in the first year but of course next year I would have to start paying the fee. Is there a best place to transfer and park your points so that you do not have to pay fees to keep the cards open until you are able to use the points?
There is no such such place. It depends on who will have availability for 2019. In fact, you may not even be able to get availability for a whole family (or for both directions) with the same program, so you may (or may not) need to have to miles in different programs.
If it wasn't for such specific needs, you could park at any "legacy" US-based airline and there wouldn't expiration issues. But there might be availability issues, especially if you aren't extremely flexible about travel dates and routings.
From Chase UR, the only US-based airline you can transfer to that flies to Europe (and has partners that fly to Europe) is UA, or BA (but BA requires high "YQ" ssurcharges in additional to miles on trans-Atlantic trips; are you familiar with that?).
Meanwhile, from SPG UA is the worst partner to transfer to, because get half as miles by transferring to UA as with transferring from SPG to most other airlines. (Though that
may change in 2018 when SPG merged with Marriott, since for Marriott UA is a preferred partner.)
Btw, it depends
where in Europe yoo want to fly, now many people, etc, that determines which are better airlines and which are worse airlines. (For example, to northern Norway, only Star Alliance airlines can get you there.) So that's why it's so hard to pick a place to "park". So maybe it's worth paying $95 a year (just to Chase) just so you can take the year time to get it right (instead of trying to save $95 but ending up with miles you can't use for that trip)?