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If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve® or Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ Card, then you may be familiar with one of the cards’ benefits: a $500 The Edit hotel credit. This credit helps offset more than half of these cards’ annual fee. On top of that, The Edit credit can be stacked with two additional credits, which together total over $1,000 in credits, well beyond the card’s $795 fee. And that’s not even accounting for the many other credits the cards have.

I have the personal Sapphire Reserve, and I recently stacked these credits to save over $800 on a hotel stay at the InterContinental San Diego. Let’s go over how the credits work and how I used them to take a fun birthday trip for far less money out of pocket.

What is The Edit

The Edit is a curated collection of 1,400+ hotels. These are higher-end properties that can be booked through Chase Travel℠. These bookings include perks like a welcome amenity (usually points or a free drink), free breakfast for two people, a $100 property credit, and free upgrades, with early check-in and late check-out when available.

Booking The Edit Hotels

To book hotels through Chase’s The Edit, you must be a Sapphire Reserve or Reserve for Business cardholder, or an authorized user on one of these cards.

There are some specific requirements to be eligible for the credits associated with these bookings.

• These bookings must be made directly through Chase Travel
• They must be paid in full at the time of booking
• There is a two-night minimum

Available Travel Credits

As a Sapphire Reserve or Reserve for Business cardholder, there are three separate credits as part of your card benefits that can all be stacked on one The Edit booking. Here are the credits:

• The Edit credit: two $250 credits per year, for two separate two-night stays, though the stays can be back to back.
• The Select Hotels credit: a separate credit up to $250, only through Dec 31, 2026, for specific brands – IHG, Montage, Pendry, Omni, Virgin, Minor, Pan Pacific
• The $300 annual travel credit: this applies automatically to the first $300 of travel charged to your card during your cardmember year (not calendar year)

Related: Are The Sapphire Reserve Benefits Worth the Fee?

How to Stack The Edit Credit

So how do we take advantage of these and get maximum value? We need to find a hotel that qualifies for both The Edit and Select Hotels. Here’s what I did.

First, I used this map and filtered it by Select Hotels credit. This narrowed down The Edit hotels to ones that qualify for the additional $250 credit from select hotel brands.

Then, I picked where I wanted to go. For our trip, the goal was somewhere drivable so it could be a weekend trip. I started clicking on properties around California.

Next, my goal was to find an option as close to $400 per night as possible, so we wouldn’t have to pay much out of pocket after the credits. Once I found an option, I got to work booking!

I chose the InterContinental San Diego. As you can see at the top of the screenshot below, it lists both “The Edit” and “Eligible for $250 select hotel credit”. It also links to your IHG account, so if you have status — like we do from the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card — you get those benefits as well.

As you can see from the screenshot below, it wasn’t super close to $400 per night — more like $700. However, it was eligible for Points Boost, a Chase cardholder benefit that stretches your points further when you use them through Chase Travel℠. This meant I could use a handful of points to make up the difference and still not have to pay out of pocket.

So that’s exactly what I did. I selected that I wanted to use a combination of cash and points at checkout, then I started trying different points amounts until the cash total was very close to $800. The goal was $800 because that was the total amount of credits I knew were available when booked this way.

I charged the remaining $813 to my card, then was credited $800 back using the three credits a few days later. So we paid just $13 for two hotel nights!

Remember that The Edit credit is two $250 credits, and each one requires a two-night stay. Our trip was only two nights, so I only used one of those credits. I still have another $250 credit available, which is why the screenshot above says “In use”.

Note: the $300 annual travel credit is automatically applied to the first $300 of travel charged to your card. So, if you’ve already used it, it won’t be applied to this.

Additionally, the card comes with a $300 StubHub credit — $150 for January to June and $150 for July to December. I used the $150 credit to buy tickets to a Giants game against San Diego during our trip!

Benefits During Our Stay

As I mentioned earlier, these bookings also come with additional perks that add to their value.

We received all of the above-mentioned benefits, plus additional benefits as IHG One Rewards Platinum Elite members. Those additional benefits included one night of free parking and a $23 daily resort credit. Additional benefits (if any) will vary by property.

The downside to upscale properties is that everything costs more, so we blew through all of our credits very quickly just by grabbing drinks at the bar the first night and breakfast for all six of us the next morning. Thankfully, two of us were covered for breakfast, and two of our kiddos received a discount for kids 11 and under.

When all was said and done, it ended up being a few hundred dollars out of pocket for our stay, thanks to some additional drinks and snacks. However, the cash price would have been nearly $2,000 if we’d paid fully out of pocket, so I consider it a win!

Wrapping Up

The Sapphire Reserve and Reserve for Business have big annual fees, but thankfully, they have many credits and benefits that offset them. The Edit credit is just one part of it, but when stacked with additional travel credits, it’s worth over $1,000.

I know annual fees can feel intimidating, but understanding how to use them is key to making sure you recoup the cost. All in all, the benefits on the cards equal over $3,000, making it well worth the large fee.