I’m not sure how I missed this site but Angelina Travels points to Open Hotel Alert which will email you when the hotel room type you want becomes available.

• Hotels may be sold out of ‘standard rooms’ for your dates, but you want to use points.

• Or the standard suite might not be available, and you want to use points (or upgrade instrument) to get that suite confirmed.

I’ve been aware of Wandering Aramean‘s $2.99 per month Hotel Hustle that can do something similar. But I wasn’t aware of a free tool that’ll email you when the hotel room type you need becomes available.

Say that you wanted to stay at the Park Hyatt Vendome in Paris over Christmas. The hotel has rooms for sale, but there are no award rooms available for December 22-26.

You can set an alert for a Park Queen or for the Twin which are bookable with points. Or perhaps you already have a room booked at the hotel and what you are looking to do is use points or a confirmed suite upgrade for a suite — but the standard suite isn’t available. Set an alert for the Park Suite King.

Sometimes the best resorts have limited award space available. For instance the Intercontinental Thalasso on Bora Bora is a tough get with IHG Rewards Club points. Sometimes just a night will be available, but if you keep watch surrounding nights will open up too. You can search incessantly or just get an alert.

Once Marriott transitions to their new program we know that the top Starwood properties — that historically cost double points because they are all suite hotels — are going to become briefly much less expensive. A 70,000 Starpoint per night property, which is equivalent to 210,000 Marriott points, will cost just 60,000 points through the end of the year.

However (1) hotels are going to be able to offer a more restrictive standard room at that price, so there will be fewer rooms available, and (2) there may be a lot of demand for these top properties at this pricing so those standard rooms may go quick.

Set an alert for the space you want if it isn’t available.