Wyndham Rewards has a history of making devaluations to their program without any advance notice. Just a couple of months ago they cut their mileage transfer rates in half without any sort of notice. Instead, on February 1 they updated their website to say that transfer ratios changed as of January 31, 2014.
It seems they heard our frustration loud and clear, because they’re now providing advance notice of award category changes, which will kick in tomorrow. And when I say “advance notice,” I mean that they buried the “notice” in the side of an email which was sent out to some Wyndham Rewards members, without an actual notice of what the changes will be, but rather just that there will be changes. Oh, and conveniently this “advance notice” was provided the same day they tried to sell nearly two thousand packages worth of points through Daily Getaways.
Via LoyaltyLobby, the following message was in the side of an email:
Wyndham Rewards Free Night stay tier levels for some Wyndham Hotel Group properties will be adjusted to reflect current market conditions on or around May 22, 2014. This means the points levels for individual hotels may decrease or increase.
They make no mention of this on the website, and don’t list which hotels will be going up or down in category. So as far as I can tell they won’t be adjusting the actual number of points required to redeem for a particular category of hotel, but rather will be adjusting which hotels are in which categories.
For a bit of context on how other chains do this and how it should be done, Starwood has annual hotel category adjustments, and gives a couple of weeks advance notice and publishes which hotels are going up and down in category.
By the way, while all of Wyndham Rewards’ Daily Getaways points packages sold within seconds last year, this year they’re all still available… two days later. Wonder why?
D Wonderment -- See you left a comment on May 21, 2014 about the devaluation of Wyndham Rewards points and the fact that I "ruined" the program -- please get your facts straight. I left Wyndham in May 2013 so had nothing to do with the point redemption changes...
My GF is a Shell Vacations timeshare owner. Wyndham bought Shell a couple of years ago. At a "timeshare update" meeting recently, I gave the sales rep an earful about how un-trustworthy Wyndham is....
the person that ruined SPG in the marketing dept back in 2003 was Robin Korman
She is likely still with Wyndham. She listens to consultants does nothing to make the program better and not only devalues programs but was the queen of targeted marketing ruining SPG forever
While not everything is her fault SPG lost credibility with her in office
Under her leadership Starwood lost Program of the year in the Freddies.
the person that ruined SPG in the marketing dept back in 2003 was Robin Korman
She is likely still with Wyndham. She listens to consultants does nothing to make the program better and not only devalues programs but was the queen of targeted marketing ruining SPG forever
While not everything is her fault SPG lost credibility with her in office
Under her leadership Starwood lost Program of the year in the Freddies.
She's working her magic at Wyndham now
Thankfully I hate their hotels and their program so she can carry on anyway she sees fit
Really glad I bought these points with a specific award in mins and they won't even post before the devaluation
first sell points on monday, then devalue on wednesday... did they learn this from suzanne rubin?