Hyatt for several years has wanted to offer an award calendar that showed whether rooms were actually available to redeem points. It’s something they said was tough for them to do – their systems required significant resources to query inventory for each date. There was a whole cottage industry of third party websites that built tools so that members could quickly find out what awards were available. This is especially helpful for tough to find properties, during really peak times, and with hotels that play games to limit customers from redeeming their points.

The long wait is over. Hyatt now offers live award availability – not just the price a hotel would cost if it’s available – in calendar format. A spokesperson shares,

Now, when searching for award nights at a specific hotel, the “points calendar” features a dynamic display that indicates when award nights are or are not available. Members can adjust dates, length of stay, guests, and room type to find the right reservation for them.

Additionally, if a member has a destination in mind, and is interested in seeing which hotels have award availability, the map now shows the lowest points rate, if available, or the cash rate, if award nights are not available for that stay – making it even easier for our members to redeem. Members can now easily view the updated award availability on both the World of Hyatt app and web.

This will make it easier to find Hyatt award nights – and also make it easier to shame properties that play length of stay games, or attach things like parking to their basic rooms, to make sure that award nights aren’t available. In other words, it’s a move towards transparency – one that both Hilton and Marriott have had for some time (with varying degrees of reliability).