Chase Freedom 5X Q2 2024: Hotels, Restaurants, Amazon

Activate Your Chase Freedom 5X Bonus for Q2 2004 for hotels, restaurants, and Amazon. This is likely to be our favorite Chase Freedom 5X category in 2024, since hotels haven't been a 5X category since Q4 2012, over 11 years ago. While you can activate the bonus now, the 5X bonus will only apply to spend made April-June 2024.

What Counts as Eligible 5X Spend

Note that eligible hotel spend must typically be reserved directly with the hotel (which includes the luxury hotels TravelSort reserves for clients, as this is directly with the hotel) to be categorized as hotels and earn the 5X bonus. Don't reserve through OTAs such as Expedia, Booking.com, tour operators, cruise companies, etc. since that spend won't earn the 5X bonus.

Similarly, for restaurants, only spend with stand alone restaurants typically earns the 5X bonus. Spend at food outlets located in theme parks, stadiums, cruise ships, grocery and department stores, bakeries, etc. won't earn the bonus. If you have the Chase Freedom Flex, we highly recommend using that card for your restaurant spend, since you'll earn 7X points per dollar: the 5X from the Q2 2024 bonus, plus 2X additional bonus points from the card's regular dining bonus.

The good news is that the Amazon 5X is earned not only at Amazon.com, but also for Whole Foods spend.

Each time we product change a Chase card from an annual fee card we get it changed to a Chase Freedom Flex card with the 5X quarterly bonus categories. While each Chase Freedom card has a maximum of $1500 spend per quarter that receives the 5X bonus, by having 6 Chase Freedom cards and maxing out the 5X bonus, that's 45,000 Ultimate Rewards points for the quarter instead of only 7500 points. For Q1 and Q2 that's 90,000 points, about as much (or more) than the signup bonus for many credit cards, and on spend we'd incur anyway on grocery stores (Q1), and hotels, restaurants and Amazon (Q2).

Even if you don't plan to spend much on hotels and restaurants during the Q2 months of April-June, consider front-loading spend by purchasing gift cards (although make sure that it will be billed by the hotel or restaurant directly, not a third party service that you wouldn't earn the 5X bonus from).

To maximize the benefit of the points you earn, make sure you have a Chase card such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the Ink Business Preferred so that you can combine your Freedom points and transfer them as Ultimate Rewards points to partners such as Aeroplan, United MileagePlus, British Airways, Singapore KrisFlyer, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, and more. We've used our points for Qatar First Class, ANA First Class Suites, Iberia Business Class, Qatar Qsuites Business Class, and more.