This is cool.  A friend forwarded to me this Techcrunch article about a startup website called EveryLodge.  EveryLodge presents a clean Kayak-like interface to help you find flash-sale hotel deals.  These are the hotel deals you find on sites like SniqueAway, Groupon Getaways, TripAlertz, LivingSocial, etc. Besides being a helpful website, this startup seems to have found a way around legal barriers to consolidating data from these sites.  It will be interesting to see if the site survives legal challenges.  I hope so, because after spending a few minutes with it I’ve found it quite helpful.

With an upcoming trip to Paris in mind, I was able to use this site to quickly filter by location:

I saw that there were two hotel deals in Paris.  However, when I put in the dates of travel (in August), the deals disappeared.  This wasn’t at all surprising since these flash sales tend to be near term deals, but it was very cool that I could determine that so quickly and easily.  Nice job EveryLodge.

UPDATED 4/24/2012 TO REFLECT RECALCULATED FAIR TRADING PRICES

Previously, I attempted to answer the question of €œWhen is an award flight a good deal?  In that post I suggested a simple formula to use to help decide whether it is better to pay for a flight or to use miles.  In this post, I hope to do the same for hotel stays.  

Suppose you are looking for a a hotel room and you find that you can either pay $300 a night or redeem 25,000 hotel loyalty points for each night. Which should you do? The decision can be quite complicated. You need to know how much those 25,000 points are worth to you. Plus, if you redeem points, you won’€™t earn points from the stay. And if you’re looking to earn hotel elite status, you need to consider that with many chains you won’t earn night or stay credits when you book award nights.

In order to try to wipe away most of that confusion, I’€™ve put together a three step guide to help you figure things out. The formulas are far from perfect and they won’€™t match everyone’€™s needs or beliefs about hotel points, but I know that I need something like this so maybe you do to. As much as possible, I’ve kept to nice round numbers and easy formulas.  Here goes:

Step 1) Take the # of points you would need to redeem, chop off the final two zeros, and add a dollar sign in front. Example:

25000 Points -> $250

This is the value of your points if each point was worth a penny. For Hyatt points this is a reasonable target since the Fair Trading Price for their points is just a bit above 1 cent each.

Step 2) Adjust the formula up for SPG, and down for everyone else:

Starwood (SPG):

Starwood points, according to the Fair Trading Prices chart, trade for about 1.95 cents each. For Starwood hotels, multiply the number calculated above by 2:

$250 x 2 = $500

This is your estimated cost for redeeming Starwood points.

Other Chains besides SPG and Hyatt:

For most other chains, the fair trading price is close to .5 cents per point.  So, simply divide the number calculated above by 2:

$250 / 2 = $125

 

Note: you may want to round down for Club Carlson points (e.g. round $125 down to $100 due to the lower fair trading price of Club Carlson points.

Step 3) Compare

Take the value you computed above ($250, $500, or $125 in the examples) and compare to the paid hotel option. If the calculated amount is less than the paid hotel option, then redeem your points.  Otherwise pay for the room directly.

Example A: The estimated cost of redeeming points ($250) is less than the cost of a room ($300), so: redeem points

Example B: The estimated cost of redeeming points ($500) is more than the cost of a room ($300), so: pay for the stay.

Notes:

1. The formulas above do not account for the potential loss of nights or stays towards elite status.  With Hilton and SPG, you will continue to earn nights and stays even for award redemptions so the formulas should work reasonably well.  With other chains, if you are chasing elite status, inflate the formula results by the amount you think each stay/night is worth for getting you closer to the next level of status.
2. Don’t forget to use your own common sense here. If you’re low on cash, or you don’€™t think you’ll ever be able to use your points for a high value redemption, or you simply don’€™t value your points, then by all means use the points despite what the formula says! Conversely, you may be working towards hotel elite status, or you may be holding onto your points for much higher value redemptions. In those cases, it would make sense to err towards paying for stays.

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For those of you who, like me, are always on the lookout for more ways to spend a lot on your credit card and get most of it back, here’s another possibility: get a cash advance from your hotel.

I have no idea how many hotels offer this option, but according to one reader the London Park Lane Sheraton offers up to 50 GBP per day as a cash advance, fee free.  The cash advance is charged to the room as if it were a non-points earning charge (such as internet, for example).  Since it is charged to your room, it will not look like a cash advance to your credit card company.  In fact, if your card offers extra points for hotel spend, that should apply here as well!

Sure, it’s not a ton of money, but it just may be worth asking, next time you check into a hotel, whether they offer fee free cash advances.  You will get credit card points and, in exchange, you’ll get cash that could be used directly or deposited back into your bank.  Maybe it will even make those end of year mattress runs just a wee bit sweeter.

Tip of the hat to Brent for this one!  Has anyone else seen this?  Please, let us know!

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One unusual gadget I take with me whenever I travel is a wireless pocket router. Just like a standard wireless router, this device turns a wired internet connection into a wireless one. The only real differences my travel router has from a standard router are: 1) it is tiny, so it is very easy to pack; 2) it can be powered via USB; and 3) it has a shorter range than a standard router. The one I have is from D-Link, but I expect that others are good too. The router has proved itself worthy in multiple situations:

No Hotel Wireless

On a few trips I’ve been surprised to find that the advertised internet access was wired-only. That is, no wireless was available at all. Since I regularly travel with my iPhone and iPad, but without a laptop, the lack of wireless is a big deal (since neither comes with a network port). With my travel router, the problem is easily solved: power it up, plug it in, and voila, I have wireless internet!

Slow Hotel Wireless

On several occasions I’ve found the hotel wireless access to be unbearably slow while, at the same time, the hotel’s wired internet was much faster. In these situations, the pocket router has allowed me to surf the internet at the faster wired speed while remaining un-tethered.

Charge for Multiple Devices

Some hotels not only charge for internet access (which should be considered a crime in itself!), but exasperate the situation by charging, not by room, but by device. That is, they expect you to pay for internet access for every device that you connect to the internet. When I travel with my family of three, we usually have six or seven devices that we would like to have connected to the internet. With the pocket router it can appear to the hotel as if there is a single device connected to the internet rather than six or seven. Note that this depends on the technology the hotel system uses. The trick has worked for me twice, but struck-out once.

Some hotels have wireless internet, but no wired internet. Others have great, free wireless internet. In those cases, the router hasn’t helped at all, but it’s so small that I’ve never regretted taking it along… just in case.

I’ll keep this post short since I’m writing on my iPad’s touch screen. I love my iPad, but writing more than a sentence or two is a bit tortuous. I’m writing from my room at the Hotel Intercontinental in London. I booked three nights at this fabulous hotel using 80,000 points I “earned” by signing up for the Chase Priority Club visa, plus 10,000 points I had earlier accrued, plus $60 per day. The same room, if I booked a paid stay, would have set me back over $700 per night! Despite getting such a great deal for a standard room, I hoped for a room upgrade as well. The good news was that the Chase credit card bonus alone was enough to bump me up from no status to Priority Club Platinum level. However, I had heard that Priority Club status means nothing to Hotel Intercontinental since they have a separate Ambassadors Club program (which I am not a member of). Worse, I have read that even Ambassador Club members do not get any perks when booking an award stay. So, I went in with two strikes against me: no Ambassador Club, and an award booking. At check in, I asked the clerk if room upgrades were available. He told me they were, but that there would be an up-charge. So, I pointed out my Platinum status. He typed furiously for a few minutes and soon enough came up with an upgrade to a gorgeous room on the club floor! Pushing my luck, I also asked if he could comp my internet. In return he gave me a code for 24 hours of internet access! So, back to the title of the post: it never hurts to ask

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