Hotel Hustle Is a Better Way to Search for Hotel Award Nights!

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I’ve written about using Award Mapper to search for award nights at different chain hotels all at the same time.  It’s a great time-saver!

But now there’s a smarter award night search tool.

Hotel Hustle will show you:

• Chain hotels in a specified city (map or list view)
• Number of points required for an award night
• Available award rooms for specific dates
• Paid cost of the room (for comparison)
• Value (cents per point and if it’s a good deal overall)

And if an award night isn’t available, you can set up alerts.  If the room you want becomes available with points, Hotel Hustle will email you to let you know!

I love new travel tools that help save time and aggravation!

How Does It Work?

Link:   Hotel Hustle

Hotel Hustle is a hotel award search tool that lets you specify a city and date range.  It returns results from 8 major hotel chains:

• Choice Hotels
• Club Carlson
• Hilton
• Hyatt
• IHG
• Marriott
• Starwood Preferred Guest
• Wyndham

And it shows you in real-time if award nights are actually available!

To search for hotels, enter your destination and dates.  I searched for hotels in Honolulu on April 10, 2015.

The default search shows a map with color-coded locations of every hotel from all chains.  You can zoom in and out by adjusting the search radius.

And on the right side of the map, the hotels are listed with cash price, points price, value (in cents per point), and “Hustle Hotness” (a star rating based on the redemption’s overall value, taking into account the cash price of the room, points required, and hotel chain point value).

You can filter by “Hustle Hotness,” too, though I prefer to see all the options available!

Clicking on a map location will show you the hotel’s details, including cost of a paid room, points per night, and sometimes a photo!  Clicking again will take you to the hotel website.

If you’re interested in certain hotels, you can narrow your search by selecting the chains you want in the top-left corner.  That’s handy if you only have points in some award programs.

All hotels (whether they have an award night available or not) show up on the map.  If you scroll down to the bottom of the list, you’ll see hotels that do NOT have award nights and/or paid nights available for your dates.

But the best part of Hotel Hustle is that you can set up an alert for an unavailable hotel.  And if an award room becomes vacant they’ll email you!

This is such a time saver.  I’ve spent hours on hotel websites, checking back repeatedly to see if the room I want has become available.  Hotel Hustle does the work for you!

To set up an alert, you’ll need to create a free account on the Wandering Aramean website.  Only folks who are logged-in can create an alert (by clicking “Create Alert“).

You’ll get a confirmation that the alert is set up.  And you’re able to delete it at a later date.

Within 2 days of setting up this test alert, Hotel Hustle emailed that an award room had opened up!

For folks who like to number-crunch (who, me? 🙂 ), you can also view the average value of different chains’ award points.

And if you don’t agree with Hotel Hustle’s valuation, you can set up custom point values (log-in required).  This is only useful for folks who really want customized rankings of “Hustle Hotness.”

I like that you can see all your award night options on a map and clearly see the points required per night, like Award Mapper.

But what makes Hotel Hustle better is the ability to see available award nights in real-time, and compare the price of a paid room on the same night.  And I love that you can set up alerts to notify you that you’re now able to book an award night.

Are There Drawbacks?

Hotel Hustle is a tool developed by Wandering Aramean, and it’s still new.  It’s constantly being updated and tweaked, so minor glitches are to be expected.

I do find the site is sometimes very slow to load (which makes sense, because it’s checking for real-time available rooms!).  And occasionally, the search radius function doesn’t work so well.

Folks on FlyerTalk have reported odd search results for some international destinations.  But Hotel Hustle is continually improving, and I suspect it will get better.

Bottom Line

Hotel Hustle is a better way to search for hotel award nights.  By specifying a city and date range, you can see hotels from 8 major chains, along with the number of points required and the paid price of the room.

And you can see right away if award nights are actually available.

Alerts are my favorite feature.  If an award night isn’t available, Hotel Hustle will email you if a room opens up.  That’s a huge time-saver.

Have you tried Hotel Hustle?