Should we keep Vacasa a secret?

** On November 30, 2025, vacasa will end ITS partnership with Wyndham and this will no longer be available.**

Jenn booked 3 days in a Vacasa in Nashville for September this week and it’s a crazy good deal. I mean, it’s the kind of deal that you’re afraid if you start talking about it, the company might start to realize how much money they’re losing on it and shut it down. I’d like to think we could keep this quiet but I think this cat is getting out of the bag about this so you might as well get it while it’s still available.

What’s Vacasa?

Like Airbnb, VRBO and Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasa is a short term vacation rental booking company. They team up with individual owners to list properties for rent and they take a portion of that rent payment for processing, advertising and managing the booking process. Like Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasas are bookable with points, in this case Wyndham points. Unlike Marriott Homes and Villas, Vacasas have a set point chart which allows you to get ridiculously good value for those points if you choose well.

Vacasa’s Point Chart

The Vacasa point chart is extremely simple. Vacasa charges 15,000 Wyndham points per night, per bedroom. A 1-bedroom Vacasa is 15,000 per night, 2-bedroom is 30,000 points, etc. People have reported that the cash rate ceiling for a 1-bedroom is $500, meaning that if you attempt to book a 1-bedroom that would rent for $550 per night, the redemption will not go through. I don’t know what the cash rate ceiling is for it a 2-bedroom, I assume its higher, though. Wyndham points are generally regarded as being worth 1.1 cents per point, but a 15,000 point rental worth near $500 per night is over 3 cents a point. That’s a outstanding redemption for Wyndham points. (Update – The maximum redemption as of October 2023 is now $350 per bedroom per night, down from $500)

Nashville is crazy expensive!

Blame it on the bachelorette parties, but Nashville hotel prices are out of control. We saw most hotel rooms (not suites, just rooms) going for $350-$500 per night. We planned to use some hotel points or maybe a certificate or two to book a hotel in Nashville, but daaammmmnnnn, it’s overpriced. We literally couldn’t stomach what a redemption would cost near the downtown area. But Vacasa, we’ll, that’s a different story.

Cash Value of Vacasas in Nashville

Im not saying that the Vacasas in Nashville weren’t expensive, they absolutely were, but because of how the chart works, if we want to use points, a 1-bedroom rental for 3 nights is just 45,000 points, it doesn’t matter which one. The only caveat was that we needed to keep the cash rate for that 3 night rental under $1,500. Jenn found one she liked and we wanted to book it, but we didn’t have the points yet, now what?

Buying Wyndham points

Typically, you can buy Wyndham points for 1.3 cents per point and you can buy up to 60,000 points per year. Wyndham was running a special allowing people to buy up to 120,000 points as well as get a 40% bonus. As tempting as it would be to max that out and buy everything I could to get a whopping 168,000 points, we resisted the urge and bought the 29,000 points with 11,600 bonus points for $377. That gave us the 40,500 points we needed to book 3 nights in the Vacasa. I realize that yes, that’s less than 15,000 per night, and that’s because with Jenn’s Wyndham Business Earner card, she gets a 15% discount, so it’s an even better deal!

So here’s another sneaky thing about the price of these Vacasas – just because it’s a 1-bedroom doesn’t mean it’s one bed. We found this rental with 2 beds because one of the bedrooms can’t qualify as a bedroom. Maybe it’s not big enough, maybe it doesn’t have egress, I don’t know, but it’s basically an unqualified bedroom. That means, I’m basically getting a second bedroom for the price of a one bedroom. Actually, this is extremely common in the vacation rental industry because they want to say they sleep 4 or 6, so they cram in beds to try to make it more appealing to families. This normally raises their prices but with the Vacasa/Wyndham reward chart, it counts as a 1-bedroom. That’s great for me, I’m getting a second bedroom for free!

What would this have cost, normally?

So here is what this rental would have cost normally, had we not paid with points. Keep in mind, we didn’t actually have the points, we had to buy them. In other words, we paid $377 for a vacation rental that was posted for $1,357. Essentially, we paid 28% of the listed price just by going through the steps to buy the points, then call Vacasa about what we wanted to book (points redemptions are can be done through email or phone call with them). That was it, huge discount, nice vacation rental. I can’t wait to stay in downtown Nashville, but knowing we didn’t spend a fortune makes it even better. Oh yeah, and all those taxes and cleaning fees, they are included in the redemption, which is nuts, because the taxes and fees section alone was $526!

I’m honestly not sure how or why Vacasa is doing this. It’s possible they know that they will take a loss, but maybe they’re just happy to get their name out there, since compared to Airbnb and VRBO they’re pretty small. My guess is that eventually, they will change the point chart to allow redemptions up to, say $300 per night for 15,000 points then maybe 30,000 points up to $500. This just seems unsustainable to me and I suspect a change is inevitable. That being said, there’s no harm in taking advantage of it now, but maybe we can just keep it between us, right?