Hotel Award Search Tools Comparison: MaxMyPoint vs Awayz vs StayWithPoints

We love good hotel search engines as much as the next person, especially since sifting through hotel websites to find award availability can be a pain. With old favorites like AwardMapper and Hotel Hustle now defunct, who do we have to replace them? Several sites have cropped up to fill the gap, and they're arguably far better. Let's take a look at who's in the running and how these hotel award search tools stack up against each other.

MaxMyPoint

MaxMyPoint is an ugly yet extremely powerful tool for finding hotel awards. Since its debut over two years ago, the site has made continual updates to enhance its features, including alert settings, qualifications for minimum stay requirements, and more. It's free to use, though paid members have access to more searches and alerts.

Credit: MaxMyPoint

Award searches

As it stands, MaxMyPoint maintains data for 23,355 Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, and IHG hotels. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can search for individual properties or simply select one of the most popular, ordered by desirability and the value you'll get when redeeming your points.

There are several filters available when completing a search, including:

• Hotel chains
• Hotel brands (within a rewards program)
• Median nightly point range
• Hyatt hotel category

These are especially useful on Hyatt stays. You can find awards bookable with your free night awards or get Brand Explorer credit. Once you've selected a property, you can see a detailed view of its information.

Credit: MaxMyPoint

Along with giving you an entire year's worth of award availability in one go, MaxMyPoint also shows you the value per point you'll get when redeeming your points, the cash rate of the room you're looking at, how many award rooms are available, and the room type. You can flip between a calendar view and a list view. While it doesn't look as nice, the list view allows you to check out the entire calendar without having to click through multiple months.

Be aware that search results may not be as up-to-date at a less-popular hotel. If it's a property where you really need live availability, you'll need to set an alert. This will refresh the search hourly.

Credit: MaxMyPoint

Alerts

MaxMyPoint offers a variety of alerts you can set. Paid members can have up to 15 active alerts at a time, and they're pretty unique.

MaxMyPoint also allows you to set an alert for cash pricing for both Hyatt and IHG properties.

Pricing

MaxMyPoint is relatively cheap. It offers three different membership plans, depending on how many alerts you need and how often you're looking at hotels.

Max FHR

MaxMyPoint also offers something called Max FHR, which is totally unique. The Platinum Card^® from American Express grants cardholders up to $200 in annual credit toward prepaid hotel stays with Fine Hotels + Resorts^® (FHR). Along with luxury hotels, members can also expect elite-like benefits like late checkout, an experience credit, room upgrades, and complimentary breakfast. The credit also applies to The Hotel Collection bookings, though these are less luxurious, have fewer benefits, and require a minimum stay of two nights.

The only issue with this credit is that FHR hotels tend to be expensive. That's why MaxMyPoint's Max FHR search is so helpful: It allows you to find the cheapest hotels with which to use your credit.

Credit: MaxMyPoint

You can even filter your search according to price, the credit you'll receive, and whether the property has a special offer. Note, however, that Max FHR doesn't provide real-time results. While it can help you find low-cost cash rates for rooms quite reliably, expect to see some differences in pricing from what's displayed.

StayWithPoints

StayWithPoints and MaxMyPoint are pretty similar hotel search engines. Like MaxMyPoint, it also provides a year's worth of award availability in one go. It's free to use, though paid members have access to additional alerts and alert types.

Credit: StayWithPoints

It's much better looking than MaxMyPoint, though it lacks some of the latter's functionality.

Award searches

To find hotels with StayWithPoints, you can either type in a location at the top or select one of the hotel chains located on the left. Unlike MaxMyPoint, StayWithPoints won't update award availability for less popular hotels at all. Instead, you'll need to create an alert to see results.

Credit: StayWithPoints

However, if you find yourself looking at a hotel that StayWithPoints tracks, you'll be able to get a detailed view of the property. This includes:

• A year's worth of award availability
• A photo gallery
• Cent-per-point value
• Cash rate
• Percentage of award rooms available
• Property reviews
• Property rating
• Location
• Nearby attractions

Note that the search feature for StayWithPoints is fairly limited. There is no way to filter out results when doing a location search.

Alerts

StayWithPoints offers two types of alerts to members:

• The standard alert will notify you when a full stay for your specified dates becomes available.
• The flexible alert will notify you when a consecutive number of nights in a certain month becomes available

StayWithPoints' flexible alert feature is excellent and not something MaxMyPoint offers. Say, for example, that you wanted to stay five nights at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi in January. You can set an alert to find out as soon as any five-night span within January becomes available — a great feature for those with flexible plans.

Pricing

StayWithPoints is much more expensive than MaxMyPoint, though it offers better benefits to free members.

Awayz

While StayWithPoints and MaxMyPoint offer pretty similar searches, Awayz is its own beast. Although it's still in Beta, it can provide incredible use for people — particularly those who aren't deep into the points and miles sphere.

Credit: Awayz

Don't let that fool you, though. Its customizability and wide range of search programs mean even the most experienced of us can fine-tune to our liking.

Award searches

Unlike the hotel search engines MaxMyPoint and StayWithPoints, Awayz isn't best used as a site for speculative searching. Instead, it caters to those traveling to a specific location at a specific time who want to redeem their points. Much like a standard online travel search engine, you'll need to input dates, how many people you're traveling with, and where you're going.

Credit: Awayz

Awayz then brings up an interactive map showing you the location and live award availability of all points hotels, plus more detailed information about individual properties.

Credit: Awayz

Once you've selected a particular hotel, you'll get more information, including a recommendation as to whether you should use points or cash and available transfer partners for points programs.

Credit: Awayz

Supported Hotel Chains

While StayWithPoints and MaxMyPoint only cover the same four hotel chains, Awayz monitors availability for seven:

• Accor
• Choice
• Hilton
• Hyatt
• IHG
• Marriott
• Wyndham

Filters

There are some interesting filters available to users, including some that will hopefully come online in the future:

• Hotel chain
• Distance from destination
• Transferable point currency (to eliminate currencies you don't hold)
• Free night certificate (for Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott)

There's also a function to filter by your point balance in different credit card rewards systems and hotel chains, though this doesn't appear to be live yet.

Freeform searches

One of Awayz's coolest features is free-form searches. If you have a weekend to spare and want to stay at a Waldorf Astoria, but don't care where, you can pop in a search for “Waldorf Astoria” to see live award results for every Waldorf Astoria hotel worldwide on your dates, as well as their cash costs.

Pricing

Awayz offers a free trial for folks to try out the product. Once that's over, you'll need to pay to access the site.

How Do They Compare?

Comparing these three hotel search engines is like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, MaxMyPoint and StayWithPoints are very similar in what they do, but Awayz is off on its own, acting more like an online travel agency than an award search tool (though that's part of the beauty of it).

To help you parse which one works best for you, we've drawn up a handy table comparing the high-end plans for each of these sites, as those have the most comparable benefits.

Bottom Line

MaxMyPoint and StayWithPoints are two very similar hotel search engines. While MaxMyPoint offers better filtering and a really cool feature for using your Amex FHR credits, it's also clunky and not especially intuitive. StayWithPoints, meanwhile, allows unlimited searches — even for free members — but it's more limited in what you'll find. Awayz isn't like the other two; it relies on specific dates and specific locations to find award space. That being said, it supports more hotel chains and even offers a cool free-form search function letting you look up a broad swathe of hotels at once.

AwardWallet Tip of The Day

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