Originally Posted by
mahasamatman
That's a huge waste of the credit since the purchase that gets the $300 credit also earns no points. Hotels booked through Chase earn 8 points per dollar, so you should use it for travel that only earns 1 point per dollar and thus sacrifice 300 points rather than 2,400 points.
You only lose the points on the $300 of the purchase, not the entire transaction. So, yes, it would still be ideal to use it for $300 of 1x travel spend, but in your example you lose 2400 (8x300 lost to credit) points out of a potential 6400 (8x800) (so 4000 points earned still).