Slowly but surely I’m getting the feature set completed on Hotel Hustle, the hotel award (and paid!) rate comparison tool. The latest addition is inclusion of the Hilton HHonors program as part of the search results. More than 4,200 properties are included in the mapping, bringing the total number of mapped hotels north of 27,000 across
Just like all the other brands the HHonors results in Hotel Hustle will include a score for the relative value of the redemption compared to a nominal HHonors point value (currently set to 0.5 cents/point).
The first couple hundred test queries have shown an average cpp value for HHonors around 0.4 cents so there’s a pretty good chance that number will be adjusted going forward, but I had to start somewhere.
I’m also collecting cash & points data from HHonors as part of the data process but not yet displaying it, mostly because I haven’t figured out how to parse & value those awards. But I’m working on it and the data is available so that bodes well for including it in the future.
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Please add Hyatt as well!
I know, Aaron. It is on the list. One of the harder ones to implement, but is it on the list.
This is AMAZING. Thank you for all your hard work. Easy to use and intuitive. I’ve been wishing for something like this for a while so I don’t have to search (and remember) a bunch of different websites for award availability and costs.
thx for all your work. one improvement would be to add a tripadvisor ratingbor some other quality rating to each hotel.
Just echoing the above comments, thank you so much for this fantastic travel tool, greatly appreciated!
Adding Hyatt is going to make this tool indispensable.
The tools is going to be super useful. I am having a hard time however, when it comes to popular hotel-dense locations like New York. It just times out and returns an error…
Thanks for pointing that out, Yigal. The issue is with the density of Hyatt properties. Unlike all the other chains I have to query each Hyatt property individually rather than getting all at once. So for NYC where there are 21 HGP properties it is timing out and failing.
I’m going to work on optimizing the Hyatt code a bit to see if I can speed it up. Or come up with some other way of not failing.
Now NYC is functioning, though not pricing Choice, Starwood, and Carlson 🙂
Hi Seth,
Not sure where you’d prefer feedback on hotel hustle, so here’s a few comments:
1. I love it. Absolutely love it.
2. Searching DXB 9/27-9/30 does not show the Conrad or WA – both are currently available on points and show on hhonors.com
3. I vastly preferred the original presentation of results in a sortable chart rather than the side scroll I saw today. I feel it gave both more functionality and a cleaner presentation.
Anyway, just thought I’d pass on my two bits. Thanks for all the great tools!
I got a lot of requests for a bigger map so I switched it around. I might be able to build an option for data table or map. I’ll see what I can do.
Also, the additional HHonors properties in the Dubai area should be showing now.
Awesome – thank you!
looks good.
contrasting with award mapper.. no satellite view. no “slider”/selector for amount of points.
would also be useful to sort hotel results by number of points (ascend, descend).
thanks
Adding the satellite view shouldn’t be too hard.
As for the slider to select based on points, I am not so sure the value that represents, mostly because the total number of points required does not translate well to value when comparing across all programs. A 25k redemption in Hyatt is VERY different from a 25k redemption in HHonors. What I care about is if I have sufficient points to book a room on my particular trip, and this tells me that.
Not yet announced (later this week, I hope) is integration with Traxo and TripIt whereby your hotel points account balances are checked and if you have enough points to book a room that’s flagged in the search results. Combining that with whether the award is actually available or not versus just a theory is huge to me and my search needs.
It is far more practical IMO than just seeing how many points random hotels might cost if a room happens to be open.
cool.
regarding the slider… very useful when i select the specific program in which i have points. ex: im interested in marriott, ihg, hyatt (UR transfers) under 15k/night.
balance check sounds cool too.
availability is def useful.
another useful feature of awardmapper… you can explore the map without selecting a location. ex: i want to see all cheap (award) properties worldwide.. then build a trip around that info.
thanks
The satellite view button is now available; like I said, that one was easy.
As for the points slider, I guess I view the goal differently. Rather than looking only at what is “cheap” I look at what is a good value. If you only want to stay at rooms <15k/night that's going to offer up a very different selection depending on the brand. And by connecting to a points tracking site it will be easy to just exclude the ones you don't have enough points for anyways.
At some point I plan on just publishing all the hotels on a map but that's a relatively lower priority (though I do have that for Hyatt & SPG already). AwardMapper is a different product. One which I think is serving a less useful purpose and which is why I built this. If I just wanted another AwardMapper I wouldn't bother as I think it is a pretty good implementation of what it is.
ex: best value under 15k. the slider doesnt infringe on the goal of the tool.
connecting to points tracking is cool, but… i might not transfer the points from UR to hyatt/ihg/marriott until im ready to book, so it might not be an accurate reflection.
searching a worldwide map for the best bang for the buck is also useful.
noticed that rezidor properties arent showing for several searches i tried. im assuming its in progress?
thanks