Have you ever tried to book a hotel award night only to find no availability? A lot of people stop there assuming that the hotel is actually booked. But that isn’t always the case. Some hotels have minimum night requirements for award stays and fun fact they don’t always publicize them.
How can you tell if the hotel you are trying to book has a minimum night requirement?
First of all, run a cash search for the same dates as your stay. If it returns availability at the hotel, especially standard rooms, it is a sign that they may have a minimum night requirement for award stays.
Next, call directly to the hotel and ask them. Don’t bother calling the 800 number for the hotel chain because they aren’t always in the know. It’s best to go straight to the source.
We have run into this for a couple of our favorite hotels. The Hotel Indigo in Traverse City, Michigan is a nice hotel in a great central location. It generally requires a 3-night stay in order to book award nights on weekends. We often pop up on a weekend and can only stay 2 nights so it can be very frustrating.
The Hyatt Centric in Waikiki has a 5-night minimum for award stays. We love this hotel and have stayed there twice, but it is always a problem trying to figure out how to book award nights. For our trip last fall, it meant we had to sacrifice a night in Maui in order to have 5 nights available to book the Hyatt Centric Waikiki with points. It also meant that I had to transfer some Chase Ultimate Rewards points from our Sapphire card to cover the 5th night.
Price and Availability Calendars
IHG Award Night Calendar
If you run a search on an IHG property and find no availability you can check their calendar. This does not work on the app, you have to use the website. Once you get the no availability message, it will show the link to their price and availability calendar.
When you click the link, it will show you all the dates available and the number of points required to book award nights
Hilton Award Night Calendar
If you run into availability issues when searching for award space at Hilton, select the flexible dates option below the calendar.
It will then bring up a calendar showing points and availability.
We stayed at 2 different Hilton properties during a trip we took to Key Largo this year. Initially, we wanted to stay 4 nights at the resort in order to get the 5th night free, but they were booked for one of the nights right in the middle. The calendar tool was very helpful for lining up the nights and getting the best rates.
Another thing to keep in mind with Hilton is the required number of points for an award stay can vary from day to day. For our Maui trip, we used a Free Night Certificate for the first night, and since the room rates were around $1200 per night we hoped to book the second night with points. The first few times that I checked the award rates, there were no rooms available in the point range we had on hand. I continued to check every few days until a week later some kind of deal dropped the points required low enough for me to book the room. I then called Hilton and had them connect the 2 separate reservations so that we would remain in the same room during our entire stay.
Marriott
If Marriott shows no availability for your award search, change the date input to Flexible Dates and select one month at a time.
Next select view rates for the hotel of your choice and the availability calendar will appear. The calendar also lets you see how the points rates vary from night to night. If your dates are truly flexible, you can save yourself some points by using the calendar to plan your stay.
Hyatt – Let the Games Begin!
Hyatt is notoriously difficult when it comes to finding award space for some of its most popular hotels. That can be due to unpublicized minimum stay requirements or very limited award availability.
Knowing that the Hyatt Centric in Waikiki usually requires a 5-night stay, I recently punched in a 5-night date range for September and received this message.
Next, I selected the Points Calendar option on the page.
It brought up an award chart that lists the number of points required to book a room. BUT… although you can see the points you need for an award stay, the Hyatt award calendar DOES NOT show you if the room is actually available. ERRRR!
Because of this chart, when booking our first trip in 2019, I believed the room to be available and actually transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt only to find no availability when I went to book it. Once I was done panicking and crying, I called the hotel directly and spoke to the Manager. I got lucky because he waived his magic wand and made the booking work for us.
I ran into the same situation when I tried to book the hotel again in 2022. Fortunately, this time I was savvy enough not to transfer any points until I was sure that I had everything figured out. The sad part is we REALLY like this hotel once we can get it booked.
I recently reached out to Hyatt to find out how we can see award availability for our next trip and they told me to just keep changing my search dates. This is very inconvenient and time-consuming, but I changed dates and searched for availability about 10 more times before getting absolutely frustrated and giving up.
Final Thoughts
It’s worth being loyal to a hotel chain if you can earn points that you will be able to redeem for free nights when you travel. Booking award stays is also a fantastic way to save money when staying in places that have big Resort Fees or lots of additional taxes (like Hawaii or Las Vegas).
What’s not great is finding no availability (even with super flexible dates) when it’s time to book a trip. Don’t give up if you receive a rejection saying No Availability. For most hotel chains, you can use their tools to see award availability and hopefully find nights that will work for your trip. If the points required for an award stay are a bit more than you have, check the rates every few days and maybe a better rate will become available.
If it is a Hyatt property, good luck! There are some outside sources that you can use to help find availability, but who wants to jump through that many hoops. You can also try to use the Pay My Way feature as a workaround, but that’s not very straightforward. I really like staying at their hotels and wish they would be more transparent and openly publicize their award space and minimum night requirements.
The World According to Dev 