madbrain

I'm seeing a big difference in price for the same room on expedia.com vs the Chase Sapphire reserve portal .

Price through Chase Sapphire Reserve portal : $421.47


Price through Expedia : $370.62 .


This is from the same computer, same browser. Both windows opened simultaneously.
I was not logged in to my expedia account, so this isn't a special promotion for my account.

The problem is , the same booking is about $50 more through Chase, or 13.7% more .
So, the CSR points aren't really worth 1.5 cents, but 1.5 / 1.13 7= 1.31 cents.

I have been talking to various people on the phone at Chase , Chase travel, Expedia, and now a supervisor about this price difference.
They say that they only use the Expedia backend for availability data, but Chase sets their own price.
I don't know if this difference is there for other hotels too, but it happened to be there for this hotel, which was the first one we looked at.
The hotel is on sale on expedia.com, but not on sale on the Chase portal. And Chase refused to match the expedia price. The supervisor said they don't do any price matching.
Essentially, what this means is that the CSR points are not actually worth 1.5 cents, but whatever Chase wants them to be worth.

OATS09

This has always been the case though. I've had times where I could book a flight for $800 through the portal or $500 through Orbitz or about $550 directly through the airline (this is for a domestic flight within continental Australia so I assume Chase doesn't have a good relationship with this airline). There are times when it will make sense, and there are times when it won't just like any other point/mile redemption. There have been several times I booked through Chase because they were cheaper (or only marginally more expensive) than other travel sites and there are many times where it was more valuable to use my CSR and earn points instead. I don't think it's so much that Chase is now using Expedia to make bookings but more so that they are using their backbone/framework/infrastructure but I could be wrong.

EDIT: For the record, I've checked flights again recently for the same route and they're only about 10% more than Orbitz and maybe 5% more than booking direct with the airline. Maybe my first search was a bad time or something weird happened.

mia

It sounds as if Expedia is NOT adding anything to the UR portal price, but rather that Expedia is offering a discount on their own site that doesn't apply to the site they operate for Chase. I wouldn't generalize from this one instance.



Chase does not operate the travel portal. It was outsourced to Connexions (same as Citi), now it is outsourced to Expedia. Discussion here:

Chase credit travel portal transitions to Expedia [Transition Complete]

It's not unusual for airlines to offer their lowest fare bucket only for direct booking on their own site, but Expedia owns Obitz and I would expect their pricing to generally be very similar.

RedSun

This is the reason it is always good to have different reward systems. For booking, we have Chase UR, Citi TY, BA Travel, hotel/airline and all the travel sites (Expedia etc). You shop and compare for the best $ rate of reward rate.

Super Mario

Personally, I have never noticed this. Any flight I have compared, has pretty much been the same price on Chase. I expect this from OTA hotel bookings though.

It appears as if you still can't book cruises on Chase's site, which is mildly annoying. If that is still the old process, Chase informed me that they book that direct. It's another great use of the 1.5 point valuation, especially as (some) cruises don't go on sale that much.

pkerr

I don't think this is a one off for hotel differences.
After seeing what the OP said about differences I checked various hotels at a destination I'm planning to go to. EVERY hotel I checked was either the same or LOWER on Expedia vs. Chase UR portal. EVERY ONE. Of the 7 properties I checked, 2 were the same and the other 5 were anywhere from $15 to $20 a night less.
That said, these were not chain properties but boutique type places.
I would be interested to see what others find when comparing identical locations.

Need

I booked 4 hotels about 12 nights total in Europe. I think 3 of them are slightly lower on Expedia, and 1 was slightly lower on CSR UR portal. The $5 to $15 per night difference was not enough to offset the 1.5X on UR portal, so I used the portal. Even if I had the CSP 1.25x, I would probably have booked thru the UR portal unless I am running low on points.

pkerr

I'm just curious as to why they aren't the same.

Need

Maybe dynamic pricing? 3rd party sites only sync up once a day or 12 hours? 3 of the 4 hotels were only off by about $3 to $10 per night. One of the them were off by $15 and that one Expedia has it lower by $15 but it also got "Member Only Discount" $10 on the room. I was logged in to Expedia when I search.

moe8555

Finally more people seeing the Chase 1.5X smoke and mirrors. I'm not saying it isn't worthwhile, but all these silly valuations of combining CSR and FU/others, etc. for 2.25%+ back through the portal are kind of ridiculous (for flights it's less so, I suppose). In many instances (for hotels), the Chase portal prices can easily and readily be beaten, and that's even before factoring cashback portals, OTA rewards programs, coupons, etc.

OATS09

To be fair, the portal is the worst redemption option but it's still not a bad one. Even if it's devalued some and comes out to 1.4 cents per point instead of 1.5, that's still effectively 4.2% back on travel and dining, 7% on quarterly categories, and 2.1% on everyday spend. If that's the worst option, you're still doing good. And there will definitely be cases where it doesn't make sense to use the portal so in that situation, pay cash (card) and try the portal again next time.
You can certainly do better and get more bang for the buck (or rather, the point) by transferring to partners but some will say 'is that truly saving money if it isn't something you were going to do anyway?' And maybe it was. At the end of the day, people have different preferences, priorities, desires, and tastes.

Super Mario

Every company has a "smoke and mirror" component to their credit card rewards. To expect the lowest price for your redemptions and highest return is setting yourself up for disappointment. I agree with many of your points though.

For me currently, I find it best to use separate hotel loyalty programs for booking rooms. Sometimes, it is even better to pay out of pocket. I remember looking all over the place for my recent trip at the IC Miami to see where I would get the best reward "valuation". I ended up booking a rate direct for under $300 total for Friday & Saturday, with my status upgrading my room to a view of the Bay. There's a reason why you get a discount for booking hotels direct.

I save my UR for cruises and airfare. Cruise prices are the same as direct, giving me my 1.5 valuation. I also just booked two, round-trip flight tickets from Cleveland to LaGuardia around Xmas/New years, through Delta on the portal. 29,000 total UR points. Can't be mad at this.