Over the weekend, I read a post at Dan’s Deals with great interest as he detailed his experience filing a price match guarantee claim for a booking made through Chase Travel℠ for a property under The Edit (Chase’s luxury hotel booking platform). I was excited to learn that it is possible to make a booking that takes advantage of The Edit benefits and uses the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card’s Edit Credit while also price matching to the best possible rate for the property in question. Yesterday, we published a coffee break podcast about this and my recent experience with it, but I wanted to detail it on the blog in written form with some more detail.
Chase Travel offers Price Match to Sapphire Reserve for Business cardholders and some Sapphire Reserve (consumer) cardholders
Chase recently rolled out the Price Match Guarantee, though they’ve done it on a limited basis thus far. I believe that all Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business cardholders have access to the price match guarantee. However, Chase has only enabled its price match guarantee for some consumer Sapphire Reserve cardholders.
In my household, my wife and I both have the consumer version of the Sapphire Reserve card. She has the price match guarantee feature in her account, but I do not. That’s kind of frustrating, particularly since we were looking to book two rooms at the same hotel, and she could price match, but I could not. Annoyingly, you simply may not see this option available in your account, in which case the price match will not yet be applicable to you. Hopefully, Chase will launch this more widely in the months to come.
The good news in my household is that we made a successful price match guarantee claim….sort of.
Our price match guarantee experience
I needed to make a two-night booking at the Virgin Hotels Nashville in Nashville, Tennessee. The price for two adults and two children through Chase’s The Edit was $1,011.31.
Since this is a two-night stay, the reservation qualifies for the Sapphire Reserve Card’s $250 “The Edit by Chase Travel” credit. Virgin Hotels are also part of the additional $250 credit for select brands that has been added in 2026. That special extra $250 credit applies to stays at IHG, Virgin, Omni, Pendry, and a handful of other brands (see more details in our post). By booking the Virgin Hotels property through The Edit, I can stack both a $250 Edit credit and the $250 credit for these select brands to get $500 back. After the rebate, the stay would cost me $511, which could be paid in cash or with points.
Virgin Hotels Nashville was available with a points boost at 1.65 cents per point. That meant that I could pay for the whole $1,011.31 stay with about 62,300 points. However, I wanted to charge at least $500 to my Sapphire Reserve card in order to trigger the credits. I could therefore use about 27,000 Ultimate Rewards points to cover ~$511 and then charge the other $500 to the Sapphire Reserve (which would trigger the statement credits). That’s a pretty good deal when you consider that the Edit bookings get complimentary breakfast for two and a $100 property credit on top of other benefits.
However, I took a look at Google Hotels and then the Virgin Hotels Nashville website. I realized that Chase Travel was quoting a price for four adults in the room. Despite the fact that Chase asked how many adults and how many children (and the ages of the children), it priced the room as though I was putting four adults in the room. When I searched the Virgin Hotels website for rates including four adults in the room, the price was about $1,011. However, when I searched availability for two adults and two children (my kids are 8 and 5), the total rate was $895.
That was a difference of $116.31, which created the opportunity for a price match guarantee.
An important note is that if you’re going to file a price match guarantee claim, you’re going to need to do the math and charge not only the amount you expect to get statement credited from any applicable $250 credits, but also the amount you expect to get back from the price match guarantee.
In other words, in this case, I wanted to charge at least $616 to the Sapphire Reserve card (we went with $617 charged to the card), expecting $500 back in statement credits between The Edit credit and the credit for select hotels, and $116 back from the price match guarantee claim. If I had only charged $500 to the card, Chase would claw back the statement credit for the amount of the price match guarantee claim.
This requires doing some extra math because you need to determine how many points to use in order to charge exactly what you want to your card. You’ll probably need a calculator. We used 23,878 points and charged $617.32 to my wife’s Sapphire Reserve card, expecting to get back $616 in total ($250 The Edit, $250 select brands, $116 from the price match guarantee claim).
I was excited to test out the price match guarantee. Before I realized that the ability to file a price match guarantee claim was targeted, I tried making a booking with my Sapphire Reserve account, expecting to see a button to file a claim after making my booking. However, there was no button to file a claim on my account, which I later learned was because the ability to file a claim is targeted. There is no mention at all of the price guarantee on the Chase Travel site when I am logged in to my account.
However, my wife noticed that she was indeed targeted for the Best Price Guarantee in her Chase account. For her, the benefit is advertised right on the Chase Travel Home page, below the search box.
I cancelled my reservation, and we rebooked through her account. Immediately after booking, I went into her “My Trips” and the Virgin Hotels Nashville reservation was clearly labeled with the Price Match Guarantee.
After clicking on that booking to view the details, there was a clear button to submit a price match guarantee claim shown on the reservation details.
The process itself was pretty simple. I just had to fill in information about:
- The domain where I found the better price (in this case, “virginhotels.com”)
- the room type
- the stay dates
- a screenshot showing the better price
As is typically the case with price match guarantees, all the details will need to match up. That includes obvious stuff like the property dates and room type, but also the number of occupants, the cancellation policy, etc.
Interestingly, the rate to which you are comparing does not need to have the same inclusions. In other words, while The Edit bookings include daily breakfast for two and a $100 property credit, the rate against which you’re comparing does not need to have those inclusions. That is huge. We have often lamented that the Chase Travel credits aren’t always worth much because the price when booking through Chase Travel is often higher. However, the price match guarantee allows you to get the Edit benefits and also the best available rate you can find, provided that you can find a better rate within 24 hours (a price match guarantee must be filed within 24 hours of making your booking).
I was pleasantly surprised when my wife received an email just a few hours after submitting her price match claim (a turnaround time of less than 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon!), indicating that her best guarantee claim had been approved….sort of.
The note from Chase Travel indicated that they were approving the price guarantee claim as a courtesy.
In this case, because I wanted to use the Sapphire Reserve statement credit benefits, we had to book a prepaid rate through Chase Travel (the Sapphire Reserve’s The Edit credit and the credit for select brands both require a prepaid booking). The rate we were booking through Chase Travel was not a non-refundable rate; instead, it was a flexible rate that could be cancelled up to the day before check-in. I was therefore comparing against a flexible rate from Virgin Hotels. But, like most hotels, Virgin Hotels Nashville does not charge up front for a flexible rate booking. Rather, if you make a flexible rate booking directly through the hotel website, you’ll pay at checkout.
That difference in payment terms was of significance in this case. The end result was positive in that they honored the price match guarantee claim despite the difference in payment terms. However, it is worth being aware that you’ll probably want to compare against a prepaid rate rather than one paid at the hotel, since you’ll have to book a prepaid rate in order to use the Chase Edit credit.
In hindsight, I should have just price-compared against a site like Hotels.com or Expedia, which would have allowed for pre-paying the hotel rather than using the direct hotel website. See the opportunity to “pay now” below.
My wife’s price match claim was approved for $100, which was a little short of the actual difference of $116. I don’t know if it would have made a difference if we had compared against a site that required a prepaid booking. Perhaps Chase Travel approved an even dollar amount as the exception here rather than the exact price difference.
Writing this post made me realize that the rate has dropped for our dates, so I’ll get a chance at a do-over with a new price match claim, this time using something like Hotels.com’s Pay now rate for comparison.
Bottom line
Chase Travel’s Price Match Guarantee is an awesome feature for those Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders who can take advantage, particularly because you can stack The Edit benefits (and statement credits) with a claim for the best available rate. Unfortunately, not all cardholders have this feature available. If you have the feature available, you should see it on the main hotel search page — be sure you have the feature before making any nonrefundable bookings. In our case, we were making a flexible booking and made a successful claim against the rate charged directly by the hotel, though I’ll look for a price match against a prepaid site next time. I certainly hope that this feature gets rolled out to all Sapphire Reserve cardholders in the near future.
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One thing to note is that the calculation in the post for the price match difference was calculated via total cost, not the nightly rate. I discovered that from submitting the price match claim today, you need to put on the nightly rate instead, which usually has a significant difference compared to the total. Needs to recalculate how much they would refund you by the nightly rate difference*how many nights of stay. Instead of the total price difference
How is your experience using Hotels.com’s Pay now rate like you mentioned in the article?
Not seeing any price match below the search button. Anyone try to call in to price match?
If you don’t see it, you’re not targeted for it.
I can easily find a better rate, but they all only have the pay later option. Hotels.com, Booking.com, Priceline.com, etc all only seem to give the pay later option for the fully refundable rate… Am I somehow not seeing the option for prepaying?
May be the hotels you’re looking at? I see the option to pre-pay for a fully refundable rate for hotels on Hotels.com and Expedia.com .
Thanks, I’ll check again…
I agree. Book the hotel at Hotels.com with gift cards from Staples (Ink Business Cash) or 10% Amex Offer (Blue Cash Everyday). Buy my own breakfast. Check out at 11:00, coat check my suitcase.
at some point, this exercise of trying to use these Edit credits and others just becomes time consuming and work…
That point is already in the rear view mirror.
Look at everything that Chase has done over the past year (almost) since the CSR refresh. Not just with the CSR but within its whole ecosystem. It’s only going to continue. And, it’s only going to get worse. Inside yourself, you know there’s something better out there for you. Be healthy. It’s time to say he’s not worth it and move on.
Never mind, I missed that screenshot. Thanks for sharing!
I shared a couple of screenshots of what it looks like in the post.
I made a dummy booking just out of curiosity and don’t have the price match visible.
I’ve already used both of my Edit credits for 2026 so perhaps it will show up next year.
Sounds like you were not ‘targeted’ for their price-match tool. I have not used my credits yet, and I also do not have the tool. Chase is being cheap, here.
Chase clearly doesn’t want this to ‘work’ or be ‘easy’ for anyone. They’d much rather you ‘give up’ and juice their profits. The fact that they’ve only enabled this ‘price match’ for *some* card members is yet another farce. Make it easy and for everyone!
Some try to put every shade of lipstick on this pig . . . eroding their credibility.
By all means, please do close all your cards, and go back to cash or barter systems. For those that keep theirs, it would be better if Chase did the ‘price match’ for everyone, not just ‘targeted’ members.
It’s not about closing ALL cards and existing the game. It’s about acknowledging what’s happened to Chase specifically. (I was piggybacking on your comment and not criticizing you.)
I’m with you. Chase IS lacking credibility here. For sure.
What bothers me the most is major companies promoting benefits that are mostly illusory. Chase Sapphire Reserve… now with a best price guarantee! Sounds good! Except… all you have to do is find a rate that is exactly comparable within 24 hours… which in many cases does not exist! And that’s on a platform that is ridiculously overpriced to begin with. So they get to market something that makes them seem price competitive when the tool they are marketing is illusory and the platform they are marketing it for is more expensive in the first place. That strikes me as wrong, and something that one might be held accountable for.
Did Nick get a price match as a courtesy even though it was pre-pay versus pay-on-site? Yes. Did Dans Deals even though it was regular vs member rate? Yes. But when that’s all exceptions to policy and not the actual policy itself, raises lots of red flags about the long term success rate of achieving a best price guarantee claim with Chase.
But to your first point, if a better rate doesn’t exist elsewhere, then the price you’re paying isn’t ridiculously overpriced to begin with, right?
I tend to agree with you that it’s relatively easy to find a better price, particularly when it doesn’t have to include the $100 credit or breakfast for two. I would just be looking at this as an opportunity to price compare before I even start the booking process and then immediately file a price guarantee claim, just like I did, getting both the best price *and* the edit benefits. It eliminates the problem of the portal being overpriced.
At least in my case I showed how I could have easily just submitted the same price from a different site in order to compare against a prepaid rate. Since the response time was so fast, even if they denied the first one, I’d have had time for another. Since it’s a flexible booking, I could always cancel and rebook to submit a future price claim. I think it’s actually very net positive for the people who have it available. I just wish it was available for everyone.
Yes, but you can easily find a rate online that includes breakfast and a credit (maybe not $100 – but expedia for instance often has $25 credits included) for less money – maybe it’s a “non-public member rate” or slightly different terms or whatever, but we all know it’s circling around the same square. It’s kind of like buying a mattress where the mattresses are all produced exactly the same but they have different serial numbers at different, uh, mattress firms. They played that game for years until the bigger mattress companies revised their price match policies to be exactly the same or comparable.
And you are correct that you can always HUCA on your claims and try to slice and dice it, or cancel and then rebook to start the 24 hour clock over again, but if that’s the case, why limit the policy to 24 hours on refundable bookings? Make it 24 hours on prepaid non-refundable and up to refundable time on other bookings.
There’s practice and there’s policy. If in practice they grant the claims even though the policy says otherwise, great. And there will be some times where the Edit is more expensive than FHR (I’ve seen it when searching) and if you can price match and get 8x instead of 5x points and be able to use the Edit coupons – even better.
But the proof will be in the pudding, and as you note, hard to really know because it’s not actually a feature available for everyone (it’s not for me). My guess is that they will have something like a $100 courtesy limit for everyone per 12 month period, and then deny after that. Would explain the $100 you received versus $116.
For what it’s worth, I got an email from someone about 30 minutes ago who listened to the podcast yesterday and rebooked a stay, submitted a price match, and got a courtesy match (veryslight difference in cancellation terms – direct booking deadline was a few hours better), getting more than $450 back. Not limited to $100, anyway.
I mean, awesome! If you are targeted for this, use it ASAP. Because I’d be floored if long term we’re going to be able to match Edit rates to direct member rates given that even that one is a courtesy match. So easy to manufacture slight differences.
> Yes, but you can easily find a rate online that includes breakfast and a credit (maybe not $100 – but expedia for instance often has $25 credits included) for less money – maybe it’s a “non-public member rate” or slightly different terms or whatever, but we all know it’s circling around the same square.
You don’t need to match the inclusions at all. You can use a non-breakfast rate. This was heavily emphasized in the article.
The point is it’s not like the Edit benefits are so amazing compared to saving actual money. So to jump through all of these hoops just to price match – the only point of doing that is to enjoy the Edit benefits. Yes can potentially enjoy 8x through Chase Travel / Edit coupons, or you can cut the CSR completely and use another portal and get a similar 8-12x through Rakuten or Citi or whomever. Otherwise just book away from Chase.
$250 off plus 8x is going to beat 12x off through a different OTA for the vast majority of situations even if you completely ignore the other benefits. (Sure, there’s Bilt hotel credits, Citi Strata Elite credits, etc.)
The Edit’s weakness continues to be selection. But if you’re actually interested in that level of hotel, with price match it seems decent to me.
Problems with the Edit are selection of hotels, availability of rooms (amazing how many times FHR has a room Edit does not) and pricing (sometimes matches FHR, sometimes it is still inflated over FHR).
It just depends what you value things at. If you value breakfast and a $100 property credit and the possibility of a room upgrade highly – great. If you value those things as incidentals to begin with – not so great.
Absent the $250 coupon, looking at a 2 night stay that would cost ~$920 with Edit or ~$770 direct. Do I really care about Edit benefits most of the time? Not really! So absent the $250 coupon, I’d go direct every time based on those rates and save $150. With the coupon – sure, i’ll take the benefits, but I don’t really value the Edit benefits at $250 let alone $150.
Wild card for me is always AA Hotels – with the AA Exec card could split the difference and pay ~$870 but in the example I’m looking at i’d end up with something like ~16k AA miles which i’d value at $240 plus ~10k LPs. So now I’m at $630 which is $290 less than the Edit rate (or $210 less than Edit if you factor in the value of the Chase points I’d receive).
All a bit of 3D chess, but it really just depends what you value things at and what is actually valuable to you.
> Absent the $250 coupon, looking at a 2 night stay that would cost ~$920 with Edit or ~$770 direct.
So price match to $770 and pay $520 after coupon.
Not targeted for price match, so a bit academic.
But TBD anyway on whether the price match would work, right? Comparing to a member rate not a “public rate” among other minor circling around the same square things I am sure. So it’s just Chase’s discretion. Obviously can give it a try and see if I’d get a courtesy match – and would of course give it a try if I was targeted for price match.
And still would be 8x on the $520 so that’s ~4k points or ~$60 of value or so at 1.5cpp. So net is $460. It’s not uncompelling, but certainly not guaranteed to work either.
And if it doesn’t work, Amex Plat is still more compelling if you want “the benefits” because it’s a $300 coupon not $250. And of course that coupon can be used on a much greater selection of hotels.
Price match is better than nothing and if the price match buffet is open, grab a plate and get some. But like with anything else, if they start paying out more than whatever marketing dollars they budgeted to be able to say they have a BPG, suddenly every technicality in the book will be preventing claims from being successful.
Well said, Peter. Agreed. “Illusory” is the right word for it. All by-design. Benefits programs are made to look incredibly generous on marketing, knowing that the compliance hurdles and hyper-specific restrictions ensure that only a tiny fraction of cardmembers ever successfully receive them.
It reminds me of a point I raised recently on the Doctor of Credit thread regarding Amex’s recent Resy credit devaluations. While corporate compliance attorneys will point to the fine print of a Cardmember Agreement, like “Changing the Agreement” clauses, to prove these tactical shifts aren’t “legally” a fraud or a technical bait-and-switch, and will then have the audacity to use preferred corporate-speak and buzzword-y euphemisms to tell us all that it’s “an optimization strategy” or that it “enhances efficiency,” most consumers see it for exactly what it is.
Whether it’s a “rug-pull” (nerf, devaluation) on a credit ecosystem, or a “best price guarantee” locked behind targeted rollouts and a restrictive 24-hour exact-match window on an already overpriced portal, we know it when we see it. They bank on the average consumer getting frustrated, hitting a wall, and giving up. It’s a calculated strategy to market a premium perception while juicing their margins on consumer exhaustion.
The real solution here isn’t relying on the benevolence of issuers to stop the “rug-pulls”; it requires sensible consumer protection regulations targeted at credit card rewards and ancillary benefits. (Of course, the corporate shills and, ironically, libertarians, ugh, are gonna bring out the pitchforks, now). Credit Card Act of 2009 offers protections for interest rates and fees, but leaves the multi-billion-dollar rewards and travel portal ecosystem looking like the Wild West. CFPB should establish clear standards to prevent phantom perks (but they’ve been disempowered by this admin.)
Personally, as a baseline, here, I’d like to see: 1) all-or-nothing (like for this Best Price Guarantee), not just for a targeted group; 2) standardized comparison windows, at least 24-hour review periods, like with flights, and forbid issuers from denying matches based on technicalities like payment terms, so long as tier and dates are same; 3) advanced notice on portal devaluations (banks currently have to provide 45 days notice for significant changes to account terms), so same should go for such benefits. The issuers should compete on actual value, instead of mere marketing illusions. Rant.
The worst I’ve seen this year was Grubhub which specifically said they were going to have a promotion on specific dates and then pulled it after one weekend. I do view that as much worse than an ongoing promotion through an expiration date that’s months out which then gets pulled early.
Only book refundable stays. Don’t claim the price guarantee. Just cancel the Chase booking and rebook on the lesser expensive platform. Why jack around? Not you but some people are repeatedly trying to paint the CSR (and Chase as a whole) as “Oh, it’s not that bad.” Don’t let yourself be sold down the river.
No one WANTS to book on Chase Travel, but they do want to use their CSR $250 credits.
Yeah, like, we’re literally only using the portal because of the credits; otherwise, it’s horrendous value.