Wyndham Rewards Moves To Four Tier Award Chart, Top Hotels Will Cost 50% More

ngl 5000 points looks pretty good for quick road trip stops. When transfer bonuses go on that can be like 4K points for a night

My travel is skewed more toward the rural areas and business purposes. Therefore, I tend to stay in a lot of 5000-point Wyndhams and not the Nepo Baby Grand Egotism Resorts that most avbloggers concentrate on. I have a lot of Wyndham points, and if I didn't get reimbursed for my hotel stays, this re-evaluation would be absolutely perfect for me.

Ben, you need a slight correction to this sentence as the lowest tier will decrease: 'As you can see, two tiers will remain unchanged, properties in the cheapest tier will increase in cost by 33%...'.

Also, to their credit, the is the first change to the award chart since 2019, and, hopefully, not an every couple of year thing.

Not a fan of those upcoming changes.
Most likely a bunch of 30k-properties convert with 50% premium to 45k points per night.
Also most likely only handful will go down to 5k/nt.
And to make it even worse, Wyndham will devalue 15k-hotels to 30k category, without a good cause. They just getting more greedy, similar to Hyatt and Hilton.

Well, Marriott mostly crashed it’s loyalty program few years ago. Not many cares about them anymore (handful of Lifetime Plats possibly;))
Hyatt gutted it’s own chart this year.
Hilton keeps devaluing their Honor points with some properties costing a million points…
And Sonesta converted all branded credit cards – so people have no easier way to earn points.

The hotel loyalty world is getting less and less attractive…
Wyndham was staying a promising brand, but after quitting their AirBnB flick (expected, and they still have Cottages.com), they seem to turn to wrong direction. Hopefully not too drastic so people still can use their points system.

Happy travels!!

Take me back to the pre-2019 award pricing change when ALL rewards nights were 15k points. The Wyndham brand catches a lot of hate, but there are a couple of very nice properties that I've always found plenty of reward availability. With the new Wyndham cc you can save 25% on award redemptions, so the top properties would come down to 33,750 per night. Not great, but it beats a sharp stick in the eye.

Would be fine…if it wasn’t motivated by greed. Because Wyndham has way too many properties priced at 30,000 and even 15,000 a night that should be that high!

The Wyndham program has saved me a few times in peak periods where nothing was less than $400/night and I could redeem 15K instead. Sure it's rarely anyone's favorite program but their points (and having the Earner+ card) can be very useful at times. The new 5K point level is a bit laughable as the 7,500 point properties are already few and usually the lowest-rated Travelodges. Hopefully we don't see too much 15K > 30K creep.

With 100% bonus, a 45K room costs 292.50 and 30K room is 195.

With present 80% bonus, 45K = 325 and 30K = 216.67.

The math will work for many 45K props. 30K tbd.

Wyndham European city properties are often underrated and will revalue. Book soon at 15K.

Wyndham is by far the worst hotel "chain." It's not even a "chain" because Wyndham owns exactly zero hotels and manages exactly zero hotels, at least as of the end of 2024. Wyndham is merely a booking platform. It also has the worst RevPAR of any hotel "chain."

Ben - In your two hotel point comparison, you didn't use the actual cash price. What you listed as the cash price is actually the some cash+some miles price.

Has anyone noticed how half the hotels that used to be bookable on points are now unable to be booked?

As Wyndham has acquired more mid to slightly premium properties, e.g., Registry Collection all inclusives, I do not think a 30K was sustainable. I do not like it, but I get it.

The category changes are pretty brutal, and much worse than I expected. I expected nicer all inclusive resorts to go up to 45k. But I was surprised to see the amount of unremarkable hotels costing 30k now. I even noticed some budget hotels in Mexico City that jumped from 7.5k to 30k.

Looking at some of the changes, they're just sort of dumb - the 5k/15k example Lucky pointed out is one example. Yes, I understand that the all-inclusives and others were bound to be adjusted upwards, but removing the 7.5k tier doesn't seem to make sense.

The issue with WR is price relative to points.
This change is a huge devaluation.

Let's start with 7500 going down to 5000.

People who welcome this has never stayed at budget locations. There is really no decent properties even at 7500.

Then the 15k most are mixed bags.
The decent ones would be at 30k will now be 45k. Only a handful would be worth 45k. But most of them is not worth comparing with the cash price, even at 0.6 app. Just look at Ben's example.

There used to be a few sweet spot properties at 15k. But now I suspect that would move into 30k.

One very significant missing part since Ben isn't pushing their cards so he probably forgot about it and he obviously would pick Capella or Aman over Days Inn or Super 8 so WR is probably his last resort.

But cardholders get upto 25% off. That's what makes WR actually worth something.

I’m confused. Wyndham has at least one “aspirational” property?

"Top hotel" and Wyndham. Seriously?

Some really good deals available.

Hawthorn Suites Abuja is $210 revenue rate or 5000 pts.
Ramada Colombo is $115 or 5000 pts.
Ramada Motera NaMo Stadium is 5000 pts which is a steal when there's a game or concert.

I know that for a lot of people they discriminate against Wyndham properties, but the Clearwater Beach property listed in this article is arguably nicer than the Hyatt next door, which Hyatt lists as a Category 6 property.

I have stayed at the Wyndham Grand in PR on four or five occasions and run into celebrities and athletes alike at the resort. If it's good enough for Lin Manuel Miranda to lay his head on Wyndham pillows then it's good enough for me. This past January when the caribbean airspace was shut down due to the Venezuela President being captured I was able to quickly move Capital One points each day to cover my stay until I was able to get off the island, saving nearly $1,000 per night (the hotel was offering guests a special nightly rate of $800 plus taxes and fees for anyone stranded due to the airport closure). Since I have the Wydham credit card the nightly rate was only 27k points per night at the time.