Unless you want to spend a lot of time waiting for buses, a car is a must to fully experience Jackso

The Hyatt Regency Jacksonville is a category 3 property and cost 24,000 points for 2 nights, which I think is a great deal. For the extra 12,000 points I was lacking, I opted to transfer points over from Ultimate Rewards.
Unless you want to spend a lot of time waiting for buses, a car is a must to fully experience Jacksonville; due to Jacksonville s size and low density, most destinations are not within walking distance of each other. Mass transit is limited to the city bus system, and an elevated rail system in the downtown district that links both banks of the river with a crossing car rentals in hawaii on the Acosta Bridge. The bus system is minimally adequate; no bus runs past midnight, and many bus routes stop running at around 8 or 9PM.
In Chicago, I don t own a car and even when I travel, I try to rely on public transportation as much as possible. However in Jacksonville, just getting to and from the airport in a cab would cost $50 each way. Therefore it seemed to make more sense to rent a car.
I remembered Daraius of Million Mile Secrets had a great 11 part guide on car rentals , so I went through and read it all and was surprised to see that in his examples, Chase Ultimate Rewards was the cheapest option!
Typically using points / miles for anything other than their intended purpose is a TERRIBLE value, so I was curious to see if Daraius had just gotten lucky or if using Ultimate Rewards for car rentals was actually a good deal.
Astonishingly, the cheapest option was only 5,772 Ultimate Rewards Points or $57.72 in cash, while the most expensive premium option was 9,625 or $96.25. Both of these options were STILL cheaper than the cheapest option on Kayak
Another neat thing is that unlike Hotwire or most discount car rental sites, according to the terms and conditions on Chase s travel portal, as long as you cancel 2 days before your rental, there aren t any cancellation fees!
I was about to book the car rental via Chase because paying car rentals in hawaii either 5,772 UR Points or $57.72 was WAY BETTER than paying $108 via Kayak but I ended up getting distracted and came back a few hours later to book it.
Instead of logging in with my Chase Freedom, I accidentally logged in with my Chase INK Bold, which like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, gets a 20% bonus when you use it to book travel on Chase s travel portal.
Ultimately (no pun intended), renting a car for 4,617 UR Points was an offer I couldn t refuse so I went ahead and booked it. However even if I didn t have any Ultimate Rewards points, it still would have been a great deal to pay only $57.62 car rentals in hawaii out of pocket car rentals in hawaii instead car rentals in hawaii of the normal asking price of $108.
Using 46,767 points from Ultimate Rewards (4,617 points), Hyatt (24,000 points) and Southwest (18,600 points), I was able to cut the price of my 2 day trip to Jacksonville from $1,027 ($607 flight + $314 hotel +$106 car) to $0 out of pocket
car rentals in hawaii Car rentals on Kayak are always the *most* you can expect to pay for a rental car. There are always a ton of coupons that can be used to get a discount on the rack rate you see on Kayak. The challenge is to identify which one out of the hundreds of coupons will work best.
Similarly, using Kayak for an airfare search meant you actually never saw the Southwest fares; Kayak doesn t show those. But given the fixed-rate value of their points it is safe to say that the cheap award you booked also would have been a pretty cheap fare.
@Wandering Aramean - I checked Hotwire and it was around $80 - $100. Since it was only 5k UR, I thought it seemed car rentals in hawaii like a good deal and saved me from out of pocket expenses. To each their own. I also did check Southwest because I booked via Southwest and it was $335 RT when I booked. Again, I d rather not spend money out of pocket if possible.