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Old Aug 20, 2014, 8:13 pm
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sdsearch
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: home = LAX
Posts: 25,927
First of all, welcome to FlyerTalk, lunarmodule!

Yes, what you're missing is that many hotels don't load their reward avaiability that far in advance. The way to see this:

For each hotel on the list which doesn't have a rate your date(s), click on Check Alternate Dates. You'll find three different categories (or at least, that's what I just found searching using my account for just one night on June 12, going down the first page of 15, skipping those which did show a rate as well as those few that didn't have a Check Alternate Dates button even):

Some hotels never seem to have any reward availability ever (at least as of today). (But read on: At least some of that may be a website bug.)

Some hotels only have availablity a few weeks out (right now only showing availability through the end of this month, August 2014)!

Some hotels have loaded their reward rates months ahead, but stiill not all the way through next June. I found one hotel which had reward rates loaded, as of today, through February 2015, and several which had reward rates loaded through December 2014.

By the way, there's a bug with the Check Alternate Dates function. I don't know how much of this it explains (it might explain why some hotels don't seem to have any avaibility ever). I tried BEST WESTERN Villa Des Artistes for paid rates, and it still said no availability ever (starting with Jun 12 and the Check Alternate Dates and scrolling backwards), including going back to this week. But then I repeated the search dreictly for Aug 20 (today), and it did come up with paid rates.

So this method of using Check Alternate Dates doesn't work 100%. But I think it is reliably showing the truth in those cases where it shows hotels with rewards only loaded through December or February. It is indeed the case that many Best Western hotels don't load reward inventory out anywhere near as far out as they load paid inventory.
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