AwardMapper is one of the most useful platforms to use when searching for points hotels. The website shows hotel award pricing for Best Western, Choice, Club Carlson, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, and Wyndham. Generally speaking, most of the hotel properties for each brand appear in the search results of your desired city.
Similar to AwardHacker with airline loyalty programs, AwardMapper doesn’t necessarily show all available properties for each award search. One would imagine this is something their team is addressing but it’s important to note as you’re searching for points hotels. With that said, let’s first highlight some of the best credit cards to use for spending at hotels.
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Best Hotel Credit Cards
Travel credit cards and co-branded hotel credit cards are two options to consider using during your next hotel stay. Some of my favorite travel credit cards include Chase Sapphire Reserve, American Express Green Card, and Citi Premier Card. Each of these cards earns 3x points on your hotel spending.
Co-branded hotel credit cards can also be great to use for hotel spending. Top cards include Hilton Honors Amex Hilton Aspire, IHG Rewards Premier Card, Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, and World of Hyatt Credit Card. The Amex Hilton Aspire earns 14x points at Hilton. You earn 10x points on IHG hotel spending with the IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card. The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card earns 6x points at Marriott. You earn 4x points at Hyatt with the World of Hyatt Credit Card.
How to Use AwardMapper
Start your AwardMapper hotel search by entering your destination in the top right corner search bar. From there, a list of “Hotel Choices” will appear on the top left of the map search results while you’ll see individual hotel properties along the right side of the page. As you’ll see the map is powered by Google Maps.
You can down select specific brands in the “Hotel Choices” to show results only for brands you want to stay at. For example, you can down select every brand except Hyatt so that you’ll only see the best Hyatt hotel deals on the right side of the search results.
Booking a Hotel with AwardMapper
With your search results narrowed down, you see the name of the hotel, the hotel category (if applicable), and number of points required per night on the right side of the screen.
Simply click the property(s) you are intersted in booking and AwardMapper redirects you to the hotel booking page. From there, fill in the apprpropriate details to book your next stay.
AwardMapper Limitations
Not all hotel properties show up on an AwardMapper search. For example, Alila Napa Valley is one of the newest properties added to the Hyatt portfolio. However, when you search “Napa” on AwardMapper, this property does not show up.
In this example, you have to search “Napa” on the Hyatt website to book the property. While not a big deal, it’s important to cross-reference your AwardMapper searches with searches on the hotel website itself.
AwardMapper vs. AwardHacker
AwardMapper is essentially the hotel version of AwardHacker. AwardMapper allows you to search for points hotels geographically and then filter your results showing the number of points required. Think of AwardMapper as the Google Hotels version of Google Flights.
AwardHacker searches for award flights and the corresponding number of points and miles required. There are similar limitations when using AwardHacker in that, not all airline loyalty programs are listed on AwardHacker. All in all, a combination of using AwardMapper to find points hotels and AwardHacker to search for award flights will help you to book your next vacation using points and miles.
How do you use AwardMapper? What other websites do you use to search for points hotels? Please let me know in the comments below or by sending me an email on my contact page.
Disclaimer: If you click and/or sign up for a credit card through certain links on this site or any of my related social media platforms, I may make a commission from that click-through. The editorial content on this page and the user comments are not provided by any of the companies mentioned and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are mine alone.
