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I have been wanting to go to Bora Bora for a long time using points, never have, and recently I sparked up an interest in the Polynesian island country once again. I randomly started looking at hotel award space, and contrary to prior searches where the St Regis had very sporadic award space, I was pleasantly surprised to find a ton of dates available. Sadly, the pricing isn’t as great as it once was ( when you could find space ), but there is quite a bit of it, and remember you can always buy points to shore up your balance, or take advantage of a transfer bonus
- Chase has a 40% transfer bonus to Marriott til 6/15/24
- Amex doesn’t have a bonus but will usually run one once or twice per year
- Bilt has a transfer 20k get 25k Marriott Points ratio always
Juxtaposed with revenge travel pricing witnessed post Covid, we’ve been seeing more and more award space opening up in prime locations at attractive rates. We just saw a FlyingBlue award sale where much of the calendar was 50k business to Europe, the St Regis Maldives featuring loads of dates at 80 to 100k per night, AirBnB posting abysmal earnings, swaths of QSuites opening up, JW Marriott Masai Mara, and now St Regis Bora Bora.
Remember, getting to Bora Bora isn’t exactly easy, but if you’ve been eyeing a high value use of your Marriott points – it doesn’t get much better than this really. These rooms usually start well over $1000 a night, and can often hit $2k a night during peak travel. I’ve seen many dates under 100k Marriott points, and don’t forget that you get a 5th night free.
If you’re looking to throw some Marriott points at a Bora Bora honeymoon, anniversary, etc this could be a good time to lock them down. Crazy enough… December has the lowest rates, pre-Christmas by a couple of weeks.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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