If you already know where you want to go then searching for a hotel is generally pretty easy. Enter the location and dates and let the website of your choice kick back some results. But what if you don’t know where you want to go? What if you’re looking for inspiration, ideas or just a good deal? That’s a bit harder to make work. At least it used to be.
Thanks to the significant volume of data I’m collecting via the Hotel Hustle app I can now offer up some insight into where the “best” value hotels are across each brand and track the changes day by day. Of course, best is a relative term and means different things to different people. A property might have a high points value simply because the cash rate is irrationally astronomical. At the same time, however, there are some gems of award inventory out there from time to time and taking a look at the top 1% of values on any given day’s worth of search results presents some interesting options.
The UI still needs a bit of work but click over to the “Hot Rates” section of Hotel Hustle and pick your favorite brand. The best 1% of results from the past couple days will be displayed. Obviously award space and cash rates change relatively often so this data will, too. It is limited to only the past 3 days of searches at most and from there only the best of the best in terms of point valuations on bookings.
If clicking on a webpage is too much work for you there’s another way to get the latest information: Twitter. Not quite as much data because that would be too many tweets, but if you follow the @HotelHustle account you can get updates throughout the day on great deals and rates your fellow travelers are finding.
Great rate at Courtyard Tysons Corner Fairfax May 11 to May 13 $299.00 or 15000/nt 1.9933cpp. See more: https://t.co/A1bv7Bhh7W
— Hotel Hustle (@HotelHustle) April 6, 2015
Great rate at Four Points by Sheraton Portland East July 3 to July 5 $184.00 or 3000/nt 6.1333cpp. See more: https://t.co/9BP77P3Dxb
— Hotel Hustle (@HotelHustle) April 5, 2015
Great rate at Hyatt Place San Jose/Downtown June 11 to June 12 $409.00 or 8000/nt 5.1125cpp. See more: https://t.co/QZv7IvNECz
— Hotel Hustle (@HotelHustle) April 5, 2015
And those keep coming up fresh, just like the data on the website. Lots of great information there and following is just a click away.
How else would you like to see these great deals? Give me some suggestions and I’ll see what I can do to make it happen.
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Two thumbs up!
i fail to see the utility in this. all it does is show you where cash prices are high at a given time. so what… so you can travel to a city at peak pricing to feel good about your cpp? all it’s going to do is serve as a calendar for when key events jack local cash prices: kentucky derby, trade shows, rivalry football games, etc. and if, by chance, you stumble into one of these situations, the take away is, ummm…. duh… when cash prices are high, check to see what’s available with points.
HH has promise. if you’re going to spend time working on it, work on getting full results in cities. last month i checked it and many hotels didn’t show up in the asian cities i checked. kinda like your airline distance tools: their results ignore many major destinations on both the UA and BA tools. because of that, GC is a much better option. you also need to do something about the size of the icons for usability. maybe just a colour coded legend with coloured radius circles laid over a map showing all cities. assume Green= 4500, Orange= 7500. then, when a city is on a border (ie: KUL-PNH), hoovering over the city dot (PNH) will display the city name in the correct colour for 4500 BA points, whilst BKK will obviously be well into the Orange circle.
in case my comments are being misunderstood: i applaud and appreciate the effort you put into creating original content tools. just trying to give constructive feedback.
Sorry you don’t find it useful. And not really sure how to respond to “many hotels didn’t show up in the asian cities i checked” without any specific details.