If you carry a Chase Sapphire Preferred and you’ve been sitting on points for a Hyatt stay, transfer them before October 1. Chase is cutting the Hyatt transfer ratio from 1:1 to 4:3. That means 40,000 Ultimate Rewards now buys 30,000 Hyatt points instead of 40,000. It’s a 25% haircut on what was, for a decade, the card’s best redemption.
If you applied for the Preferred on or after June 15, 2026, you already have the new ratio. If you had the card before June 15, you keep 1:1 until October 1.
Chase announced the change on June 10. The 4:3 ratio hits the Sapphire Preferred, the Ink Business Preferred, and the legacy Ink Plus and Corporate Flex cards. Chase Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve for Business keep their 1:1 ratio to Hyatt. Translation: Hyatt is being pushed upmarket into a Reserve perk.
The timing bites harder because Hyatt already reset its own award chart on May 20, moving to dynamic pricing that pushed peak-night prices up on most categories. Frequent Miler tracked a Category 4 peak night that used to run 18,000 Ultimate Rewards points now needing about 27,000 with both changes stacked. That is a 50% increase in points for the same room. Category 1 rooms went up roughly 60%.
Here’s what they don’t tell you. If you have a Sapphire Preferred and rarely stay at Hyatts, the change costs you nothing. United, Southwest, JetBlue, Marriott, Air Canada, IHG, and the rest of Chase’s transfer partners are still 1:1. But if you’ve been building a Hyatt stash on a Preferred, the strategy that made this card famous just got worse. A category 4 peak weekend that used to cost 60,000 UR points now needs 80,000 UR points.
The Reserve upgrade math also shifted. The $795 annual fee gets easier to justify if you were burning 100,000+ Chase points a year at Hyatt, because Reserve keeps 1:1 and Preferred doesn’t. It’s still an expensive door. Do the math on your actual Hyatt spend, not the theoretical maximum.
Do this now. Log into Chase Ultimate Rewards and check your point balance. If you have a Hyatt stay booked, or one you plan to book in the next six months, transfer the points before October 1. Transfers are instant.
Then decide. If Hyatt was the whole reason you had the Preferred, either upgrade to Reserve (crunch the fee against your Hyatt volume) or shift your points to another partner where 1:1 still works. Southwest Companion Pass strategies, United Excursionist Perk bookings, and Marriott stays all still buy real value at the Preferred’s ratio. Our best travel credit cards list ranks the cards that make sense once the Hyatt cheat code is gone.
If Hyatt wasn’t your play, file this away. Your Preferred still earns 5x on Chase travel and 3x on dining, and every other transfer partner is untouched.
The Preferred is not dead. It just stopped being the cheat code for Hyatt.
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