Awayz Review—The Award Search Tool For Hotels

Awayz is an award search tool—much like ExpertFlyer and AwardLogic are for airline award searches—but geared toward helping you find a good use for your hotel loyalty points. It lets you search and compare the cost of your hotel stays in both cash and points across multiple loyalty programs so you can easily find the best deal.

Awayz is very intuitive and has an eye-pleasing graphic interface. The searches are easy to run because the tool uses the same search criteria users may already be familiar with from searching for hotel stays on other websites.

How To Search for Award Space

Searching for award space with Awayz is easy. All you have to do is enter the location you would like to visit and specify the dates, followed by the number of rooms and guests. At this point, you have the ability to filter by hotel program.

The Advanced Options section lets you further detail what you’re searching for as well as sort your results by a specific criteria like star rating, points needed, cash rate or distance. If you want to use one or more free night certificates, you can specify which chains you hold certificates with (IHG, Hilton, Hyatt or Marriott) and the amount of points they’re good for.

Use the Transferable Award Program dropdown to filter the search by any of the transferable programs you hold points with so your results will only show hotels you can book. If you do find availability for the hotel you want on the dates you’re planning your trip, you can quickly process a points transfer and book your stay.

If you have entered program information in the My Awards section, including your points balances with each program, you can leverage that functionality to sort the results based on which points are the most available to you.

How To Set Up Wallet and Awards

Setting up your wallet and awards will help you tailor the search results to be most useful for you.

While this has to be done manually, the good news is that you won’t be asked to enter any sensitive information like credit card numbers or your loyalty program log in credentials. The credit cards you hold are stored under ‘My Wallet’ and the banks and loyalty programs you have points with are found under ‘My Awards’.

Once you have entered the cards and programs you’re working with, you’ll also have the chance to enter the balances you hold with each program, which will further narrow down search results to programs you can book with.

How To Use the Award Availability Calendar

The award availability calendar is a great way to go about searching for your stays. You can see the award availability at a specific hotel for a whole month, day by day, showing the price in both cash and points side by side. It also shows what the cheapest day of the month is for both cash and points.

All you have to do is find the hotel you want and click through to the Trip Overview page. Once there, you’ll see a black ‘Award Availability’ button that displays a full month of availability at that hotel.

Travelers with the utmost date flexibility can squeeze real value out of this calendar as they’ll be able to book stays on the cheapest days. This view also comes in handy for travelers trying to find a hotel that falls under a free night certificate’s top range.

The award availability calendar lets you see just one month at a time, but you can scroll month by month for a period of 12 months to explore when the best redemptions are throughout the year.

How To Set Up Award Availability Alerts

If your award availability search comes up dry for the specific property and dates you want, you can create alerts to find out if availability opens up.

To create an alert, click ‘Availability Alert’ on the Trip Overview page. Your search criteria is used to scour availability at that hotel for the specified dates. If Awayz finds that award space opens up, you’ll receive an alert via email.

To see alerts you have previously created and adjust as needed, go to ‘Preferences’. A list displaying all alerts will be shown and you can remove or update your alerts as needed.

How To Take Advantage of the Map Feature

Awayz has a nifty map feature that might help you narrow down your hotel choices. It lets you search by city and displays all of the hotel options from the supported hotel programs. You can zoom in and out and focus on specific properties to see each price point.

You can use the filters to see only specific hotel programs and choose by location and cost. Once you’ve made up your mind, clicking on your desired property will take you to the Trip Overview page to see all the pertinent details.

Awayz offers a tiered subscription structure starting with a free trial that allows up to five award searches and five award availability alerts. A trip pass—good for 72 hours—comes with 50 award searches and 10 award availability alerts and costs $4.99.

The premium subscription, which costs $11.99 per month (or $99.96 per year) comes with 250 monthly searches and 20 award availability alerts. There is a pro subscription option that comes with further searches and alerts, but pricing isn’t publicly listed.

All tiers include the same basic functionalities like live cash and award pricing, hotel free night certificates and the ability to find award stays that include a fourth or fifth night free. Only the premium and pro subscription levels come with hotel deal alerts.

There aren’t a lot of great tools out there yet for finding hotel award space. The closest in the way of capabilities is StayWithPoints which offers many of the same tools as Awayz. StayWithPoints’ searches, however, only retrieve Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott results. Prices range from a limited-functionality free trial version (with ads) to its Premium offering, which costs $12.99 per month and comes with a full array of tools, including up to 15 alerts.

Another option is MaxMyPoint, which offers much of the same but with a simpler interface. Searches are restricted to Hilton, Hyatt, IHG and Marriott, and it also allows you to set up alerts should award space become available in the future. Plans start with a free option that also runs ads to a $7.99 Platinum subscription with a full range of functionalities, including up to 15 near real time alerts.

If you’ve noticed that you’re struggling to make use of your hotel points or free night certificates, you might benefit from an award search tool like Awayz. Being able to search for hotels, compare cash and point prices across multiple programs in one place can help you make an informed decision.