AwardSpy, a free hotel award stay availability notification service
Apr 20, 2012, 11:25 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: SFO
Programs: UA & SPG
Posts: 257
AwardSpy, a free hotel award stay availability notification service
Hey Flyertalk,
Over the last couple of months I've been working on AwardSpy, a site that helps travelers know when and where they can use their hard-earned hotel points for award stays. AwardSpy lets you create an alert for award stay availability at a property (e.g. "Westin St. Francis, November 28 - 30, 2012, Cash & Points"), and AwardSpy will shoot you an email if and when that award becomes available for booking.
I initially planned to offer AwardSpy as a paid-only offering, but got lots of feedback made me change my position. The site is completely free, and my hope is to always keep it that way. Down the road, I may roll out a paid plan that gives some added benefits over the free plan, but the core service will remain free.
At this point, AwardSpy supports almost all Starwood and Hilton hotels, and I hope to roll out Marriott and Priority Club hotels in the coming month.
What I'm hoping to get back from Flyertalk: FEEDBACK!
If you're interested and have the time, sign up for AwardSpy and create an alert (those two steps should only take about a minute). Tell me what's great, what doesn't work at all, what was confusing, what you love, and what you hate. I'm hoping to get AwardSpy in front of as many frequent travelers as possible to get as much valuable feedback as I can. The goal is to continue improving and refining the service.
Get started at http://www.awardspy.com
Thanks, and looking forward to hearing back from FT!
Over the last couple of months I've been working on AwardSpy, a site that helps travelers know when and where they can use their hard-earned hotel points for award stays. AwardSpy lets you create an alert for award stay availability at a property (e.g. "Westin St. Francis, November 28 - 30, 2012, Cash & Points"), and AwardSpy will shoot you an email if and when that award becomes available for booking.
I initially planned to offer AwardSpy as a paid-only offering, but got lots of feedback made me change my position. The site is completely free, and my hope is to always keep it that way. Down the road, I may roll out a paid plan that gives some added benefits over the free plan, but the core service will remain free.
At this point, AwardSpy supports almost all Starwood and Hilton hotels, and I hope to roll out Marriott and Priority Club hotels in the coming month.
What I'm hoping to get back from Flyertalk: FEEDBACK!
If you're interested and have the time, sign up for AwardSpy and create an alert (those two steps should only take about a minute). Tell me what's great, what doesn't work at all, what was confusing, what you love, and what you hate. I'm hoping to get AwardSpy in front of as many frequent travelers as possible to get as much valuable feedback as I can. The goal is to continue improving and refining the service.
Get started at http://www.awardspy.com
Thanks, and looking forward to hearing back from FT!
Apr 20, 2012, 11:43 am
#2
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Programs: Marriott Platinum, IHG Platinum, Accor Platinum, SPG Gold
Posts: 29
AwardSpy, a free hotel award stay availability notification service
Welcome to flytalk, mshafrir
Sounds awesome! I am going to check it out.
Thanks.
Sounds awesome! I am going to check it out.
Thanks.
May 23, 2012, 1:13 pm
#3
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: SFO
Programs: UA & SPG
Posts: 257
Hey guys, thanks for all the help beta testing AwardSpy. I was able to fix a ton of bugs/issues, especially for users of older versions of Internet Explorer.
More hotel support and new features coming down the road!
More hotel support and new features coming down the road!
Jun 10, 2012, 2:24 am
#5
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: HH Diamond, Marriott Gold, IHG Gold, Hyatt something
Posts: 33,544
More hotels, more searches
Looks like only Hilton and SPG right now. I'd be interested in a site that would let you search among many brands for particular dates. So, not just an alert service.
Even better would be a site where you could enter different discount/corp codes and get the best price. So you could enter your AAA, Entertainment card, Costco, or a corp code and find the best prices through your interface.
IHG, Radisson, and Hyatt would be the hotels I'd like see added to available chains.
Even better would be a site where you could enter different discount/corp codes and get the best price. So you could enter your AAA, Entertainment card, Costco, or a corp code and find the best prices through your interface.
IHG, Radisson, and Hyatt would be the hotels I'd like see added to available chains.
Jul 10, 2012, 8:39 pm
#7
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: LA
Programs: DL GM, HH Diamond
Posts: 727
I love this site! Besides the award alerts, it is super easy to see the categories. One request - add the state to the location details for US hotels. While searching for a hotel in Miami, FL, by simply typing in "Miami", I got excited to see Hampton Inn Miami, but soon found out via Google that it is in Miami, OK. 
Thanks for the resource!
Thanks for the resource!
Jul 20, 2012, 1:46 pm
#8
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: SFO
Programs: UA & SPG
Posts: 257
I love this site! Besides the award alerts, it is super easy to see the categories. One request - add the state to the location details for US hotels. While searching for a hotel in Miami, FL, by simply typing in "Miami", I got excited to see Hampton Inn Miami, but soon found out via Google that it is in Miami, OK. Thanks for the resource!
Thanks for the resource!
Sep 13, 2012, 8:19 pm
#12
Join Date: Sep 2012
Programs: Hilton Honors
Posts: 3
congrats mshafir, great job!
I just started using the service and I noticed that when an alert has been created, you just come back to the main page while it may be interesting to let the option to set up a new alert for the same hotel on other dates?
Also, I am not sure if possible but will it be feasable to implement an option/field where we could mention the maximum number of points that we can spend on a night (e.g 60K instead 50K normal standard) and that the tool returns availability?
I just started using the service and I noticed that when an alert has been created, you just come back to the main page while it may be interesting to let the option to set up a new alert for the same hotel on other dates?
Also, I am not sure if possible but will it be feasable to implement an option/field where we could mention the maximum number of points that we can spend on a night (e.g 60K instead 50K normal standard) and that the tool returns availability?
Sep 20, 2012, 4:22 am
#13
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 1
Great concept! I signed up for this forum just to be able to reply to this. I agree with Manish - would be great to get notification about availability in general in case we're willing to pay. Also, after an alert has been created, would be great to have the option to set alerts in other hotels in the same city for the same dates. Right now, it brings you back to the initial screen and you have to start the search all over.
Nice work. Very excited about this site.
Nice work. Very excited about this site.
Oct 3, 2012, 11:27 am
#15
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: SFO
Programs: UA & SPG
Posts: 257
Hey guys, thanks for all the responses and feedback! onesweetworld, special thanks for the blog post!
I unfortunately have not had as much time as I'd hoped for to work on AwardSpy over the last few months, but things should open up for me soon. I think there's a lot of potential for the service, and I love the recommendations that have been contributed. Will keep you guys posted.
I unfortunately have not had as much time as I'd hoped for to work on AwardSpy over the last few months, but things should open up for me soon. I think there's a lot of potential for the service, and I love the recommendations that have been contributed. Will keep you guys posted.