When we started to look for a vacation destination over the winter, there were a few requirements. We wanted it to be a fairly quick and easy trip, some place warm and fairly inexpensive. We also wanted to use some of the Wyndham points that Jenn has been accumulating on her Wyndham Business Earner card for years.
For years, her Wyndham card was a no-brainer. It earned 8x on purchases at gas stations and 5x on utilities. We used this card exclusively on those categories and were accumulating quite a few points. We planned to use those points for Vacasa vacation rentals, which you could book using Wyndham Reward points. These deals were often incredible, where you could fairly easily book a vacation rental that costs up to $500 per night for 15,000 points. Wyndham devalued it a couple of times before Vacasa was purchased by Casago, and the partnership with Wyndham ended.
When that happened, we were left with a pile of Wyndham Rewards points and no plan to use them. We weren’t terribly interested in using these points on Super 8 stays, so I searched to see if they had any vacation rentals or all-inclusive brands. As it turns out, Wyndham has been expanding their portfolio in the luxury and all-inclusive resort space and in 2024, they announced a strategic partnership with Grand Decameron.
The Problem with All-Inclusive Hotels
I have a bit of a problem with all-inclusive hotels. They are designed to keep you on property, or at least, to cater to people who aren’t interested in leaving the property. There is a bit of a psychological barrier, knowing that you paid for all of the food and drinks at the property and if you leave the resort for dinner, you are essentially paying for two dinners.
While many people are perfectly content hanging out on the beach and the pool for a few days, I pretty easily get bored and want to explore. I’m not getting out my passport and flying for five hours just to sit at a pool with a margarita. This is where lower priced all-inclusive resorts can help with this psychological barrier. If the hotel is only a little more expensive than a regular hotel, then it doesn’t feel quite as bad if you don’t take full advantage of every meal and drink at the hotel.
The risk with a less expensive all-inclusive, however, is that the food could be awful and now you’re at a resort where you can’t stand the food. This fear causes people to overspend on a resort, because who wants to be at a resort that you aren’t enjoying?
It comes down to this – spend too much and you won’t want to leave the resort, spend too little and you could have a terrible vacation. For people who don’t travel much, the stress about booking the right resort is real. If you only take one trip a year, you don’t want to ruin your only vacation.
Grand Decameron Complex Bucerias
Since we had decided that we wanted to use our Wyndham points on this trip, we had it narrowed down to the five all-inclusive Wyndham properties near Puerto Vallarta. The Grand Decameron Bucerias was closest to the city of Puerto Vallarta and the reviews were good so we chose it.
The resort itself has 5 pools and 15 bars and restaurants. It is also located on white sand beaches, only about 10 miles from the Puerto Vallarta Airport north of Puerto Vallarta along the Pacific Ocean. The photos of the resort look like a nice, no-frills resort in a beautiful location.
The points price was surprisingly only 15,000 Wyndham Reward points per night, and as a Wyndham Business Earner cardholder, we get a 10% discount. For the five days we booked, the total came to 67,500 Wyndham points. The cash value of that hotel stay was $1,337, which means that we got nearly 2 cents per point value for those Wyndham points on this stay. Since Wyndham points have a value of around 0.7 cents per point, this is an incredible use of Wyndham points.
Points Discount at Checkout is Unclear
There is a weird quirk of booking using Wyndham points and having a Wyndham credit card that offers a points discount. The discount is not displayed, ever, until after you check out. I assume this is because when the Wyndham Business Earner card refreshed, existing cardholders did not have to change their annual fee and earning structures. We kept the old version of the card, which has a lower annual fee and better earning structure but it has a 10% discount instead a 20% discount with the new version of the card.
I’m guessing they haven’t figured out how to display what you will pay based on the card you hold yet. Instead, it just shows there will be a points discount, and I guess you have to know what your discount will be. Our 10% discount dropped the point cost down to 67,500 points, but if we had the new version of the card, it would have been 60,000 points.
Flights Booked
We booked round trip flights from Chicago to Puerto Vallarta on United for 36,000 United Miles and less than $166.72 in taxes each. We already had 18,000 United miles but we needed to transfer 54,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points to have enough to book the flight. This wasn’t the best available deal to Mexico, I believe we could have flown via American Airlines for less miles, but we’re attempting to accumulate points for a trip to Europe next summer, and we’re much more likely to use American Airlines miles than United miles.
Everything included, we booked a five-night stay in an all-inclusive resort and flights for 67,500 Wyndham Reward points, 54,000 Ultimate Reward points, 18,000 United miles, and $333. The flights, in cash, would have cost $1,360.04, while the all-inclusive would have cost $1,337.18. To be able to go on a quick vacation that would have cost around $2,700 for points and $333 in taxes is a great feeling.
Will We Continue with Wyndham?
We’ve earned a lot of points paying for gas and utilities with the Wyndham Business Earner card, but lately I’ve considered switching those charges to our Bilt Palladium, where we could be earning 2x on all purchases or 3x on all purchases with the points accelerator activated. Right now, if you take it at face value, with Wyndham Reward points having a typical value of 0.7 cents per point, it makes more sense to earn the Bilt points which are valued at 2.2 cents per point. However, we booked this all-inclusive at a value of around 2 cents per point, which is way above the expected value of Wyndham points.
Whether we continue earning Wyndham points will probably be determined by our experience at the Grand Decameron Complex Bucerias. There are a lot of Wyndham properties throughout Mexico and the Caribbean and many of them offered prices that were similar to the prices on this resort. If the quality is there, and we have a good time, I could see booking quite a few trips like this. I really hope that we have a great time at the Grand Decameron, because if we do, then this is a phenomenal deal and boy do I love a good deal.
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