Find and Book Your Award Nights More Easily With Hotel Hustle
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Million Mile Secrets reader, Crystal, commented:
I recently read your post on Hotel Hustle. I used Hotel Hustle and found that Club Carlson hotels were available in Reykjavik in April with Points + Cash. But when I went to the Club Carlson website, it says that option is NOT available for this stay. Am I doing something wrong or is this just a bug in the system?
Thanks for your question, Crystal!
Crystal is referring to Hotel Hustle, which is a valuable tool for finding which hotels are available to book with points.
I took a look and couldn’t find any bugs with the Hotel Hustle website.
I’ll give you tips on how to use the site. And show you how to get the most from it!
What’s Hotel Hustle?
Link: Hotel Hustle
Hotel Hustle is a search tool that lets you specify a city and date range to find hotels where you can book award nights. It returns results from these 8 major hotel chains:
It shows you in real-time if award nights are actually available, as well as how many points you’ll need, and how much a room costs in cash!
Here are my tips on how to search for a room on Hotel Hustle.
How to Book the Room You Found
This part can be tricky.
Once you find an available award night, you must leave Hotel Hustle and click through to the hotel’s website to finish booking.
With Crystal in mind, I searched for a night at a Club Carlson hotel in Reykjavik. The night of April 15, 2016, showed 2 results, including the Points + Cash option Crystal mentioned.
This search returned 4 hotel options. But with larger cities, you can find dozens of hotels. So be sure to enter the information exactly the same way on the hotel website, including the name of the hotel, and your dates.
And keep in mind some hotel chains will show you even more results when you search on their website.
That’s because they may have special room rates for elite status members, promotions, or several types of rooms available.
In this case, I had to scroll a lot to find the Points + Cash option. Then I scrolled some more!
The last option displayed the room rate Crystal was looking for.
To be sure everything worked correctly, I went back to Hotel Hustle and searched for a 4-night stay at the other Club Carlson hotel in Reykjavik. When I clicked through to that hotel’s website, I was able to find the same options. Again, I had to scroll down a lot to find the correct room rate, but it was there.
For comparison, I checked rates for the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome, where Emily and I stayed.
Hotel Hustle said a room would cost ~$880 a night. But when I searched on the Hyatt website, I found rooms for ~$745 – over $100 less! This is just an example, but I’ve found paid rates can vary a lot from Hotel Hustle’s search results.
That said, the points information is usually spot-on!
Bottom Line
Be sure to read my tips on how to use Hotel Hustle.
Take care to enter in the information you find on Hotel Hustle exactly the same way on the hotel’s website. And be aware there can be many different room rates, including promotions, member rates, and different prices for each room type.
While I’ve found the points information to be very accurate, it’s still a good idea to double-check the paid rates you find. That’s because you can sometimes find a lower rate on the hotel’s website.
Crystal, I hope this helps you find the award nights you’re looking for! Good luck!
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