Posted: 8/14/23 | August 14th, 2023

For most of my travels, I’ve been a hostel guy through and through. And, while I still stay in hostels when I travel, since I run a merchantry from the road, I often need a bit increasingly privacy and quiet than what a hostel can provide.

But hotels can get pricey and I’m still a unseemly backpacker at heart. I hate spending money on a room I am only going to be in for a few hours a day. To save money on hotels, I started travel hacking. By using points and hotel-branded credit cards to get self-ruling stays, I’ve saved thousands and thousands of dollars in accommodations over the years.

However, it can be a bit of a pain to find hotel ribbon availability. Each hotel has its own timetable of ribbon nights (nights that you can typesetting using points), and it can be time-consuming to flip through these virtual calendars to find the weightier deal.

That’s where Awayz comes in.

This tool searches wideness hotel programs to help you find the weightier place to use to your hard-earned points on your next hotel stay.

Until now, there’s been nothing this comprehensive for finding hotel ribbon nights, so I’m super excited that it finally exists. Out of the other (few) hotel ribbon tools out there, it’s the most user-friendly, searches wideness the most hotel programs, and has the weightier features and filters.

In this review, I’ll show you what the site is all well-nigh and how to use it to find self-ruling hotel stays for your next trip!

What is Awayz?

Awayz is a tool specifically for booking hotels using points. If you’re familiar with the points-and-miles booking tool Point.me, it’s like that, but for hotels instead of flights (if you’re not familiar with point.me, check out my review to learn more).

Like other booking tools, you simply put in your location and dates, and out pop a ton of options for hotels that you can typesetting with points. It moreover shows you a side-by-side comparison of the number of points needed, slantingly the mazuma price, and gives its recommendation regarding which is the largest deal. This is a hugely helpful full-length if you don’t want to spend time and energy crunching the numbers yourself.

Currently, Awayz supports Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, and Accor, with Wyndham and Choice to be widow soon. Stuff worldly-wise to search wideness multiple hotel villenage is flipside unconfined feature, expressly if you’re trying to use a transferable currency, like Amex Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards, which can be transferred and used at various hotel chains.

Here are some of the main features that Awayz offers:

• Availability alerts
• A 12-month ribbon availability timetable
• A map full-length
• A mazuma vs. points comparison
• The worthiness to input your existing points programs to tailor the results
• Free-night ribbon availability is highlighted

How Awayz Works

To use Awayz, all you have to do is put in your desired details (location, dates, etc.). It then brings up all the misogynist hotels you could typesetting with points. You can then filter your results until you find a hotel that works weightier for you.

Awayz operates on a subscription model. There is a self-ruling trial, though, so you can try it out surpassing signing up. With the self-ruling trial, you’ll get five searches and five hotel availability alerts, as well as wangle to all of Awayz’s features, with the exception of hotel deal alerts.

The Trip Pass ($4.99) is really the largest option if you want to try Awayz to its full potential, as it gives you the worthiness to do 50 searches in 72 hours (the five searches on the self-ruling trial will be gone surpassing you know it), as well as 10 availability alerts.

If you travel and search for hotels regularly, you’ll want the premium subscription ($8.33/month when paid annually, or $11.99 when paid monthly). This tier gives you 250 monthly searches, 10 availability alerts, and hotel deal alerts (the only tier that gives this).

You can see the full dispersal of the difference between plans here:

If you sign up for an yearly plan using the lawmaking nomadicmatt, you’ll get $10 off the yearly Premium plan.

Setting Up Your Awayz Wallet

Before you start searching, you’ll want to set up the wallet and awards section. Here, you can add your hotel loyalty programs, credit cards, and the number of points you have in each.
This is important for a few reasons.

First, you can then filter by your misogynist points when searching. There’s no sense in bringing up hotels that you can’t book!

Second, Awayz will take into consideration perks like self-ruling nights (a perk on most of the best hotel credit cards), wall transfer bonus promotions (e.g, get 30% increasingly points when transferring Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors), or currencies where you can use points as mazuma (such as Chase Ultimate Rewards).

Awayz currently supports the following:

• Hotel programs: Hilton Honors, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, World of Hyatt, Accor Live Limitless
• Transferrable currencies: American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Miles, Citi ThankYou points, and Altitude Reserve points

You don’t have to add any identifying information when subtracting your programs. This is a positive for those concerned well-nigh security, but a negative for those who want the ease of will-less syncing of their point balances.

Instead, you’ll have to add in your current balances yourself, as you can see in this example:

You can search hotels without subtracting this info but subtracting this information in makes it a lot easier to see what your options are without guessing.

How to Search and Typesetting Hotels with Awayz

For our sample search, let’s say we want to get some summer sun by going to Miami for a long weekend in January. By firing off a quick search with just your dates and location, you’ll get the following:

But since this vital search brings up increasingly hotels than you’ll want to wade through, your next step is to filter the results.

The misogynist search filters are:

• Hotel brands
• Transferable currencies and hotel loyalty programs
• Free-night document availability
• Your existing points (the numbers you input at the wallet and awards section)

You can moreover sort by loftiness from the part-way of the destination as well as by point or mazuma values.

Here’s what it looks like (grayed-out programs are ones you haven’t entered point values for):

When it brings up the search results, Awayz uses its own algorithm to moreover highlight whether it thinks using points or mazuma is a largest value, which is super useful information as you weigh your options.

Once you’ve filtered and looked through the results to find a hotel that you’re interested in, select it to get plane increasingly details. You’ll see the weightier value, mazuma price, the price if you use points as cash, and buttons to see the unshortened ribbon availability timetable or to set an availability zestful if your preferred dates aren’t currently available.

In this case, the weightier deal is using Hyatt Rewards points, which you can transfer from Bilt or Chase (as indicated in the marrow right-hand “Transfer Partner” box).

If you’re flexible with your dates and want to see the unshortened ribbon availability timetable for this hotel, simply hit that woebegone sawed-off and up it pops. It’ll highlight the dates you’re currently searching, but you can moreover scroll through the unshortened 12-month timetable to see if there are largest deals out there. The lowest rates (in both mazuma and points) are highlighted in green, while the highest rates are highlighted in red:

In this case, you can see that if you could shift your long weekend trip when by just two weeks, you could save 9,000 points.

After all that digging, let’s say you’ve decided that this is the hotel you want to book. Hit “book now,” and you’ll be brought to the hotel’s website. You’re on your own from there, but plane if you need to transfer points, it’s often a very straightforward process.

Pros of Awayz

1. The worthiness to search wideness many programs at once
The most obvious pro of using Awayz is the worthiness to pull up all hotels you could typesetting with points for your desired dates and location. Without this tool, you’d have to search wideness all the programs in which you have points (or could have points if you transferred them there). That involves logging into each website, finding the ribbon charts, factoring in any fees, and comparing wideness all programs. It’s not that hard, but it does take time.

2. Points-to-cash comparison
This full-length is flipside major goody to using Awayz. Again, comparing mazuma and point values is a time-consuming process, expressly when you’re new to using points for hotel stays. Awayz takes the guesswork out of this process by using its own algorithm (which is continually updated with the latest data) to determine the weightier value.

3. Easy-to-use interface with helpful filters
The website is very straightforward and easy to use, and the filters make quick work of helping you find hotels that work for your needs. The worthiness to input awards programs and existing points helps you narrow your search lanugo plane more.

Cons of Awayz

1. It’s a paid tool
Awayz does have a limited self-ruling trial, but if you want to get the most out of this tool, you’ll have to pay: either $4.99 for a 72-hour Trip Pass, or $8.33/11.99 (annual billing vs. monthly billing) for Premium.

However, if you’re new to travel hacking and haven’t quite memorized the ins and outs of each program, it’s a undear when you consider the potential savings in not only money but the time you’d spend trying to icon out and search wideness programs.

And, as a Nomadic Matt reader, you can get $10 off an yearly subscription with the lawmaking nomadicmatt.

2. It doesn’t automatically sync with your loyalty programs and currencies
This might be a pro to those who don’t want to requite external wangle to their accounts, but it moreover adds an uneaten step in the process. It’s moreover easy to forget to update when you do use your points.

3. Not all brands are supported (yet)
While Awayz supports many major villenage — Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and Accor — it does not yet support them all. Wyndham and Choice are not currently supported, though these should be widow soon. However, if these are your preferred brands, you might not find Awayz to be useful to you just yet.

Who is Awayz for?

Awayz is expressly unconfined for travelers that are newer to redeeming points for ribbon nights. Using Awayz saves you time (and money) in the hotel ribbon search and booking process, which is expressly useful when you’re first starting out learning how to get self-ruling stays. The cash-to-points comparison full-length is expressly key for this.

But plane experienced travel hackers can get a lot of value out of the tool. If you have a lot of points in variegated currencies, you know how time-consuming it is to search wideness programs. Plus, the worthiness to set alerts can help you find elusive stays without having to constantly alimony tabs on the hotel.

***

Awayz is a welcome wing to the growing scene of ribbon booking tools. While there are a variety of comprehensive tools for finding ribbon flights, so far, nothing comparable has existed for finding hotel stays you can typesetting with points. With a growing suite of filters and features, as well as side-by-side comparison of points vs. mazuma pricing, Awayz helps you save both time and money — important resources no matter what type of traveler you are!

While it is a paid tool, there’s a self-ruling trial available, and plane paid versions wilt worth it when they help you find a unconfined self-ruling stay.

And remember to use lawmaking nomadicmatt to get $10 off!

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