Background + My Use of StayWithPoints:
I recently learned about a new website called StayWithPoints, and it’s like the “Expert Flyer” of hotels that helps you find hotel award availability. I used the subscription to set a “Specific Dates Alert” on my recent trip to Amsterdam. Since I had an expiring Hilton free night certificate, I decided to try to use it at the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam which I have heard great reviews from. Unfortunately at the time, the date I wanted to stay at the Waldorf did not have any standard rooms available on points for me to use my certificate on. So, I set the alert so that the site would email me when the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam had a room for 110,000 points on a specific date. And if it alerted me, that means that a standard award was available. Then I could call Hilton to utilize my free night certificate that comes with my Hilton AMEX Aspire Card. It was quite easy to set up the alert, as shown below.
About a week before my desired stay date, I got an email from StayWithPoints saying that my hotel was now available. Woo-hoo! I confirmed and checked on the Waldorf Astoria website, and sure enough, it was there. A quick call and I was booked!
How to Sign Up for StayWithPoints:
They currently have 3 tiers of membership, a Free, Basic and Premium. Basic is currently $4.99 a month, and Premium is $12.99 a month. You can also get 2 months free with a yearly subscription.
Popular Hotels Vs. Lesser Known Hotels:
StayWithPoints tracks award availability for a large number of popular hotels. These are the aspirational hotels that people try to get redemptions at such as Waldorf Astoria, Conrad and Andaz. Right now, they only have hotels from Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt on the site.
For the aspirational hotels, you can see a full-year display showing the number of points required each day, the cash rate, and the value of your points. For other hotels, it will have an “Alert Only” message near the property name, and with these, you can’t see a full-year calendar. But, you can set an alert to check for availability on specific dates, or you can create a “flexible alert” which will give you a view of the full month’s worth of availability.
Standard Alerts:
All memberships come with standard alerts (1 for Free, 5 for Basic and Premium). Once you find the hotel you want to track, you can set these alerts. These standard, specific date alerts can be helpful in a few instances. First, it could be like my situation where my travel dates were fixed but I really wanted to stay at the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam and wanted to be notified when the hotel’s award availability opens up. Second, you can track prices for dates that may have availability, but you want to see when the price drops below a certain amount.
Flexible Alerts:
Only premium comes with 2 flexible alerts. With this, you will be able to select the number of nights you wish to stay (up to 7 nights) in a given month. And, then you will be notified once any of the consecutive nights are redeemable with points. This can be helpful in many instances, such as trying to get 5th night free awards with Marriott or Hilton or needing a specific amount of nights at a particular hotel for your trip to work out if you don’t want to check in/out of multiple hotels.
Change Alert Frequency:
The free membership comes with a 3-hour alert frequency, versus basic and premium search every hour for you if you choose so.
The Verdict:
Overall, I think that StayWithPoints is a great tool to help find award availability. In particular, I like that it helps to find space at aspirational properties that have limited availability. It was nice to set the alert and not have to worry about constantly checking on the website if something popped up.
Have you tried StayWithPoints before? Or do you have any features that you wish to see? Share below!
Cheers,
Ty
Have any questions? Comment below or email me at takeofftotravel@gmail.com. I’ve also started working with a travel agency, Fora Travel, and can assist in booking hotel stays or planning trips. You can also view all my other posts here! Thanks for stopping by!
