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When planning a trip, I’m always looking for hotels that offer me amenities, benefits, and a good value. Value is relative, especially when booking luxury hotels. Sometimes it makes sense to redeem points and others I find the cash rates a much better value. Searching through hotels in multiple programs and being able to toggle between redemption and cash costs has been an onerous process, until now.
Awayz by Odynn makes it easy to search for hotels in the following programs:
Select the number of rooms and guests traveling. Type in where you want to go and your travel dates. Click “Search.”
You can select any awards that you have in your various loyalty program accounts.
You can choose the programs that you have transferrable currencies in as well (like American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards).
I decided that I wanted to book the Park Hyatt Chicago. I found the hotel and saw that for my selected night that I could either pay $766 total or redeem 29,000 points.
I clicked through and was brought to a page that further summarized my options. I like that the transferrable partners are displayed on page.
If you click the “Award Availability” tab, a calendar will pop up showing all rates and redemption costs.
When you click through, you’re brought to the hotel site to book. I chose to redeem points for my stay this weekend and completed my reservation.
You choose which credit cards you hold.
You can also manually enter your point balances for both hotels and credit cards.
Pros & Cons
The interface is simple and it quickly pulled up a list of hotels. All of the data that I’ve checked has been accurate with the right rates and redemption costs appearing on the hotel sites. I love that I can quickly search for ways to use a free night certificate and search by individual programs. You can set alerts if space is not open when you want to book and you’ll be notified when awards are available. I wish there was an easier advanced search to choose brands via checkboxes within a portfolio (i.e. St. Regis under Marriott Bonvoy®). You can use the free-form search feature, type “St.Regis” in the search bar and click “search.” A list of St. Regis properties across the globe will then populate in the results and on the map. I also wish that you could connect your loyalty accounts so that you did not have to enter your balances manually. These are minor gripes and on my wishlist for future releases.
Pricing
Awayz by Odynn offers three pricing options. A limited, free trial that offers five searches, a Trip Pass that offers 50 searches over a 72-hour period, or a Premium subscription that costs $8.33 per month (billed at $99.99 per year). The Premium subscription offers the best value and if you click here use the code: thebulkheadseat, you can save $10 off the annual subscription, which brings the monthly cost to only $7.50 per month.
Anthony’s Take: Awayz by Odynn is a simple and powerful tool to make sure you get the best value when booking hotels. I’ve used it a few times now when planning trips and will continue to use it instead of having to flip back and forth between points calendars and cash rates across multiple sites.
User Generated Content Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
