How to find hotel award availability: Use these tricks during your search

Whether malicious, incompetent or just plain inconsiderate, virtually all hotel websites make reserving an award stay harder than it needs to be. Some have hidden points calendars, while others refuse to show full award availability. Some are simply glitchy.

Let's take a look at ways to combat these quirks with each major hotel chain to make the booking process easier.

Find Marriott Bonvoy award availability

Marriott's website falls firmly under the category of "glitchy." Often, a hotel may look completely sold out — even when awards are wide open. We've identified one cause of this phenomenon: For some reason, signing into your Marriott account adversely affects the amount of award space you can see on the Marriott website. This isn't always the case, but it happens often enough that it's worth a mention.

For example, here's the award calendar for Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa, Dubai, before signing into my account.

Here's the award calendar after signing into my account.

Again, this doesn't always happen. However, if you're searching for a Marriott hotel only to find no award space, it's worth logging out of your account and searching again.

Related: Best ways to earn Marriott Bonvoy points: From hotel stays and credit card spending to travel partners

Find Hilton Honors award availability

Hilton isn't the only hotel chain guilty of this, but it's one of the worst offenders.

Hilton allows you to book many different room "tiers" with points. Even if there are no standard rooms available, you can generally book a stay for an upgraded room — even a suite — as long as you're willing to pay exponentially more points (which most of us are not).

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The thing is, there often are standard rooms, even if Hilton denies the claim. You can sometimes find it by extending the length of your search by a day or two. For example, a standard room at the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem is 95,000 points. But as you can see from the below calendar, there are no standard rooms in September 2024 when searching for a single-night stay.

However, when searching for a three-night stay, we find three check-in dates with 95,000-point prices. We can tell from the above calendar that standard rooms are, in fact, available from Sept.1 to 6.

The bigger issue is that Hilton agents typically aren't able (or willing) to retroactively cancel a portion of your stay. Those who desire a one- or two-night stay can't book a three-night stay and cancel the night(s) they don't want. You may have luck by using the Points & Money option to redeem points for only the nights you actually want to stay and pay cash for the rest. Then, ask Hilton to cancel the cash portion of your stay.

Related: 12 ways you can earn more Hilton Honors points in 2024

Find World of Hyatt award availability

Unlike Marriott and Hilton, the Hyatt award calendar can be remarkably ineffective when searching for availability. While you can view monthly increments of award prices for hotel rooms and suites, the calendar, unfortunately, doesn't indicate if there is actual availability on that specified date.

Take a look at the below award calendar for the Andaz Maui. It appears that every day in February 2025 is available. In reality, you're looking at the price each night would cost if there were available rooms.

Fortunately, there's a much more practical Hyatt calendar — it's just not created by Hyatt.

Awayz is a tool that specializes in finding awards with many hotel chains. It's not free ($11.99 per month or $99.99 per year), but if you spend a considerable amount of time searching for hotel awards, you may find it's well worth the money.

All in all, Awayz does a fair job, and it provides perhaps the most accurate Hyatt award calendar on the interweb. Below is the February 2025 Andaz Maui award calendar. The site shows all award availability, even if suites are the only option.

If you're not keen on paying a subscription for the privilege of a serviceable Hyatt award calendar, you may be able to use Google Hotels to guess which nights have available awards. This is far from foolproof, but it's worked for me plenty of times.

Related: Everything you need to know about World of Hyatt

Find IHG One award availability

IHG publishes an award calendar, but it's not prominently featured on the site. It actually takes a trick to even find it.

To pull it up, you'll need to find dates for which the hotel you want isn't available. Only then will a "View available dates" link pop up in the top right corner.

Clicking this link will take you to the hotel's award calendar. While it's a bit of a pain to go through this rigmarole for each IHG hotel you're searching for, it's far simpler than spending hours stabbing in the dark for the lowest prices.

Related: The award traveler's guide to IHG One Rewards

Find Choice Privileges award availability

When you think of Choice Hotels, your mind probably doesn't produce images of luxury hotels and glitzy beach resorts. Most likely, you'll think of Comfort Inn or EconoLodge. However, thanks to Choice's partnership with Preferred Hotels & Resorts, you can book properties like this with your points.

You can book many of these hotels online, but to see which are available for specific dates, you'll need enough points for at least one night at your desired hotel. If you're like most of us, you're probably not sitting on a pile of Choice points but instead opt to transfer points from travel rewards credit cards. American Express Membership Rewards and Capital One miles transfer to choice at a 1:1 ratio; Citi ThankYou Rewards and Wells Fargo Rewards transfer at a 1:2 ratio.

There's an alternative, though: the (hidden) award calendar. Instead of searching for your hotel in the default "list" view, click "Map view" on the left side of the page.

This will take you to a world map where you can zoom in to find the hotel you're after. Once you've selected it, you'll immediately be taken to a calendar showing available dates and accurate pricing.

Related: Your complete guide to earning and redeeming with Choice Privileges

Bottom line

Don't let hotel websites thwart your vacation plans. You can outwit their clunky websites with the above tricks, which can help you find the cheapest awards and stretch your points for even more travel.