mshafrir

http://www.awardpad.com/

I built this tool in the last few weeks. It lets you plug in a location (e.g. city, state, zip code), a check in date, and the number of nights you are planning to stay, and shows nearby hotels and how many SPG points or cash & SPG points it will take to book those hotels, if there is availability. I provide a link to book the stay on SPG.com.

I also include a rate lookup tool where you can plug in a hotel, ratecode, and date, and get the rate for that night at the hotel.

It's still a little rough around the edges, but if you get a chance check it out and let me know what you think. If you find any issues or bugs, I would love hear about them through here or PM/email. And of course, more features to come!

Thanks

mahasamatman

Thanks. The award search looks pretty useful.

Though what I would find much more useful for a rate lookup tool is one that would return all possible rates. The most annoying thing about searching on spg.com is having to run multiple searches to find the lowest rate.

swag

Big usability bug - I enter a date and search from the home page, on the results page the date is reset to today. It should stay the same as the date entered, until I change it. (Firefox 3.6.8 on Windows 7 x64, if that matters).

mshafrir

swag, what date did you search on? I set any date in the past to today's date.

swag

Ok, tried again. Looks like the culprit is the year field.

Searched by zip, May 4 2011, 5 nights. Date gets reset to May 4 2010. Changed the zip to a city (not realizing year had changed), and then being in the past it resets to current.

For dates in the past, I'd suggest leaving the date intact and displaying an error, instead of resetting the date to today and searching. The most common use case would seem to be someone who enters correct month and day and forgets to set the year. In that case, why make them reset all three date fields - easier if they can just reset the year.

As is, the worst case is that the user doesn't notice that after entering May 4 2010 (but meaning 2011), the search results displayed are for today, and then they click all the way thru and book for today. By the time they realize the mix-up, they may be looking at cancellation fees.

mshafrir

Ah, great point. Will fix this.

BlissWorld

Also, searched a random date where your website shows St Regis San Francisco is available for redemption at 20,000. However, spg.com shows no availability as the hotel is sold out.

DownUnderFlyer

Thanks, very nice tool. It also shows the Rack rate which is great when researching SPG50s.

ehud

A great tool.

It'll be awesome if you can add a search on all properties in a city using a set code.

BonViveur

Fantastic tool. You should get paid for it.

Thanks.

mshafrir

Hey BlissWorld, thanks for uncovering this issue - should be addressed now. Of course, let me know if it comes up again!

camsean

Wow, that's a great service you've come up with.

Does it work for hotels outside the US?

chrisdeaner

Pretty Slick! One useful thing would be a calendar pop-up by the date to use for selection. I always end up opening up my windows calendar when it's not an option so it'd be a bit easier to have it on the page. Otherwise, well done!

envgeo

Thanks!

mshafrir

Camsean: yes, it works for all Starwood hotels.