Chase Travel Points, Car Rentals and Vegas to Tahoe recs

It’s possible you are seeing the Chase portal rewards multiplier. When you use points on the Chase app your points are worth a bit more (IIRC it’s like 15% more). That could explain the price discrepancy.

Lake Tahoe is stunning that time of year. Some of the activities may be closed (such as tubing the Truckee River) but still loads to do outside. Best bet is probably to get an Airbnb in north Lake Tahoe and just explore. Get a boat one day and cruise around the lake (go to emerald lake); hike, head into the small towns. Just a great place.

In my experience, chase tends to actually charge me more for flights/hotels than the actual price so I end up not using my points a lot of the time. For example, my flights are gonna run about $550ish through Chase when I can book it directly through United for $500. Not a huge difference but it was enough to make me call and bitch. All for it if I am legitimaly getting the rental for half off though.

As far as yall suggesting things to do - I was thinking leaving Vegas Monday and just do car camping at a couple national parks on the way. Never been out West and wish I had more time but I was think of going through CA and stopping along the way. Would love to see the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Sequioas, and Yosemite but that seems like a bit much to pack in Monday to Thursday. Rough itinerary would be Monday in death valley, Tuesday in sequioas and Wednesday in Yosemite, then Thursday thru Monday in Lake Tahoe. I'm thinking the Monday to Wednesday itinerary is a little tight though so I wanted to hear from yall if that is too much and what I should cut out.

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Using them to purchase an airline ticket? A bad move compared to transfering to a carrier for an international flight.

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I know you and I have gone round and round on this but generally speaking what you said simply isn’t true. Yes, you are correct that if you transfer to the right partner for the right time of year you can get a great deal on business class seats. No doubt about that.

But if you get the 20% additional value then booking through Chase on average is better than just straight booking most airline tickets. That was the original point of the portal. That doesn’t make the chase portal not as good of a value, it just means there’s a potentially better use out there but again it’s with a limited amount of specific partners done in a particular fashion.

OP rental cars routinely offer much better deals with partners and members, the quote is likely the correct quote.