Tag: Wyndham Business Earner Card

Latest Vacasa/Wyndham Devaluation Stings A Bit

Posted on by David Cox in Travel Hacking

The Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devalued again, for the second time in just 6 months. This is pretty annoying, because this partnership went under the radar for a while, and as people became aware of what a tremendous deal this was, they had to start dialing it back. Now after a second devaluation, the partnership is still pretty good but it’s just not the same fantastic deal it was before.

We have loved this program for a while and have used it a couple of times, once for a trip to Nashville, where we saved almost $1,000 by buying points and redeeming it on the rental and another where Jenn got a great deal on a Vacasa in Playa Del Carmen for a girl’s trip.

What Happened Now?

The original redemption rates for Wyndham points on Vacasa rentals was simple – 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom, per night on any rental up to $500 per bedroom per night. In October of last year, they kept the same basic structure, but lowered the maximum redemption from $500 per bedroom per night to $350 per bedroom per night.

With the change made in October, it effectively made any rental that cost more than $350 per bedroom per night unrentable on points. The newest devaluation makes those properties rentable again, but means that any property that cost between $250-$500 per night per bedroom just got twice as expensive as it was prior to October 2023.

The new Vacasa/Wyndham redemption rates are essentially this: for any Vacasa vacation rental, it costs 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night for any property that costs up to $250 per bedroom per night. For any property that costs $250-$500 per bedroom per night, that will cost 30,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night. Any property that costs more that $500 per bedroom per night will be unavailable on points.

ExampleBefore Oct 2023Oct 2023 – March 2024After March 2024
1 Bedroom $200/Night15,000 Pts/Night15,000 Pts/Night15,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $300/Night15,000 Pts/Night15,000 Pts/Night30,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $400/Night15,000 Pts/NightUnavailable on Points30,000 Pts/ Night
2 Bedroom $450/Night30,000 Pts/Night30,000 Pts/Night30,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $600/Night30,000 Pts/Night30,000 Pts/Night60,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $900/Night30,000 Pts/NightUnavailable on Points60,000 Pts/Night
Effect of last 2 Vacasa/Wyndham devaluation on redemptions

These are All-In Prices

The $250 per bedroom per night price is the all-in price not the headline price on Vacasa’s website. They might show a headline price of $200 per night, for example, but for 5 nights it’s not going to be $1,000, it’s probably going to be closer to $1,400. This is because they charge a number of taxes and fees, which can get pretty extensive.

These fees can be state and local taxes, amenity fees, booking fees, damage waivers, etc. In my experience, these will probably cost an extra 30 to 50 percent on top of the rent itself.

I think we can all agree that fees are getting out of control as you can see below. I mean, damn, I know you have expenses and all but do you need to itemize them and make me pay one by one? Just tell me what the price is! I mean, I get it, you got an HOA, but you can include that in the price instead of charging me for an ‘Amenity Fee’? And what the hell is a ‘destination surcharge’?

How Many Properties Does This Actually Affect?

One of the bright spots about this devaluation has been that if you had a rental that you liked that normally cost $200 per bedroom per night, you have gone completely unaffected by this. There are a lot of quality vacation rentals that are under that $250 per bedroom per night range and they are the same as they ever were.

That being said, if you had your eye on a more expensive unit, you might be reevaluating your plans now.

Let’s look at the Destin Florida area for a 5 day rental in June to see the real life results of the devaluation. Let’s say you’re a family of 4 and you would prefer a 2 bedroom vacation rental, but would settle for a 1 bedroom if it had room for everyone to sleep.

The below examples are taking into account a 40% upcharge for taxes and fees. These fees vary by property, so some are higher and some are lower but in order for me to use the filters on Vacasa’s website for this chart, I had to make some assumptions.

Up to $250 per bedroom per night$250 -$350 per bedroom per night$350- $500 per bedroom per nightMore than $500 per bedroom per night
1 Bedroom25 (15,000 pts)119 (30,000 pts)129 (30,000 pts)120
2 Bedrooms323 (30,000 pts)298 (60,000 pts)94 (60,000 pts)12
3 Bedroom204 (45,000 pts)86 (90,000 pts)29 (90,000 pts)4
Example availability of Vacasa vacation rentals with room for 4 near Destin for a random summer extended weekend.

The unicorn rental is if you can find a 1 bedroom with enough sleeping space for 4, that can be rented for 15,000 Wyndham points. In this example, prior to October 2023, there would have been 273 total 1 bedroom properties rentable for under $500 per night. When the first devaluation occurred and dropped the maximum price for redemption to $350 per night, that number dropped to 144. After the March 2024 devaluation, there are only 25 such properties left at the 15,000 point level. That’s only 9% of the original available properties at that rate.

Two bedroom properties fared a little better in the devaluation than the one bedroom properties. 94 were affected by the devaluation in October and another 298 were affected by the March devaluation. In this case 45% of the two bedroom properties in this example were unaffected by these devaluations.

The three bedroom properties fared the best with 204 of the total 319 properties for a total of 64% unaffected by the devaluation.

In general, the next time that I rent a Vacasa on points I’ll most likely be renting something that is 30,000 points per night, because the unicorn 15,000 point redemption is just going to be very hard to find now. It probably means that we will be looking for a two bedroom which will probably be more comfortable for us than a one bedroom, but twice the number of points is still a bit of a kick to the gut.

Elevated Signup Bonuses as a Consolation Prize

I don’t know if Wyndham did this at the same time as the most recent devaluation to soften the blow a little bit, but current signup bonuses for Wyndham credit cards are massive right now.

Wyndham is currently offering 100,000 point bonuses on their Wyndham Reward Earner Business card and their Wyndham Reward Earner Plus (Consumer) card. They are also offering a 75,000 point bonus on their Wyndham Earner card. All of those bonuses are the largest bonuses ever offered according to Frequent Miler.

The Wyndham Reward Earner Business card is one that we hold and continue to use. Jenn signed up for this one when the bonus was only 45,000 points. The reason we continue to use it is that it has some great point earning rates. It is 8x at gas stations and 5x on utilities. I put all of our gas and utilities on it for this reason. The full 100,000 point bonus for this card is after spending $15,000 on the card within 12 months.

If you really like those Wyndham points (which we do), the Wyndham Reward Earner (Consumer version) Card has some great earning categories too. It is 6x at gas stations, 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. It is also currently offering a 100,000 point bonus after a much lower $2,000 in spending within 6 months.

If you spend a lot on gas and you like vacation rentals, these cards can rack up points for those rentals in a hurry. In addition, all 3 of the Wyndham cards offer a 10% discount on award redemptions if you are a cardholder. This means that the example of a 1 bedroom Vacasa under $250 per night isn’t actually 15,000 points per night, it’s really 13,500 points per night for cardholders. The 100,000 point bonus alone would pay for a week at those rates.

Keep in mind that if you were to maximize these redemptions at a full $250 per night per bedroom, and you had one of these credit cards to reduce the redemption to 13,500 points, you would be redeeming those points at 1.85 cents per point. If you are earning 8x on all of your gas spending, you are essentially earning 14.8% back at gas stations. That’s pretty ridiculous.

Vacasa Still Remains the Best Way to Book a Vacation Rental on Points

Even with the rapid fire devaluations, Vacasa still remains the best way to book a vacation rental on points. Marriott has it’s Homes and Villas collection which does allow for booking vacation rentals using Bonvoy points, but the rates are much higher, and I would argue the points are harder to earn.

Sure, if you are a business traveler, you might be able to earn quite a lot of Bonvoy points by staying in Marriott hotels, so Homes and Villas might be pretty attractive for your family vacation. But, if you’re not a business traveler, the ability to earn a lot of points through spending on gas and utilities on the Business Earner card or by gas, groceries, and dining on the consumer Earner card is huge.

I’m still hoping that Hyatt, IHG, or Hilton can someday begin to make their points usable at VRBO or Airbnb, but I wouldn’t count on it. That being said, as long as Wyndham keeps the amount of points needed to book a rental low as well as allow easy earning of Wyndham points, it’s going to remain a fantastic deal. There is no doubt in my mind that the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership remains the best way to use points on vacation rentals.

Why I’m Not Mad About the Vacasa Devaluation

Posted on by David Cox in Hotel Programs

This post was written in October 2023 after the first Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devaluation. For a post about the most recent devaluation, which took place on 3/26/2024, please visit my newest post on the subject.

There has been a lot of chatter in the last couple of weeks about the Wyndham points program recent devaluation. Wyndham points have suddenly become less valuable for booking Vacasa vacation rentals. At the end of the day, I’m more relieved by the changes made to the program than upset about it. It seemed like something that was inevitable and I think they still managed to keep the partnership valuable with Wyndham.

Update (3/6/2024) - Loyalty Lobby reports that starting on 3/26/24 pricing for a Vacasa vacation rental with Wyndham points will be 15,000 points per bedroom per night for a rental with an average price of up to $250 per night per bedroom. The price will be 30,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night for a rental with an average price of $250 to $500 per night per bedroom.

We have used Wyndham points twice to book Vacasa rentals and have gotten great value with those two bookings. I have written about those redemptions in the two blog posts below.

Should we keep Vacasa a secret?

Using Wyndham points on a Vacasa vacation rental can be such a crazy good deal, that maybe we should keep this quiet?

What is the Vacasa Partnership with Wyndham?

Vacasa is another short term home rental agency, like Airbnb or VRBO. Being a family of four we appreciate the extra space a vacation rental provides, and we try to eat healthy as much as possible which is difficult to do when eating at restaurants all the time. Because of that, a kitchen is a huge bonus for us. I know people hate the “inconsistencies” of vacation rentals, but I’ll take a vacation rental with worn pillows and sheets and a kitchen over a 300 square foot hotel room with a terrible coffee maker and perfect sheets. I also find daily housekeeping to be more of an annoyance than a benefit.

There are very few partnerships in the short term vacation rental space, Marriott has Homes and Villas and Wyndham has Vacasa. Hyatt is working on a vacation rental program called Homes and Hideaways, but we’re all waiting to see whether or not it becomes a big deal or just a few rentals in a few locations. Because of the limited choices, booking vacation rentals with points is not easy. But the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership is the best way right now to book rentals with points.

Wyndham and Vacasa put together a relatively easy to understand program. Basically, if you looked at the Vacasa website and you found a rental that you liked, and it was available on the days you wanted, you could rent it for 15,000 Wyndham points per night per bedroom. In other words, if the rental was a 1-bedroom, it would cost 15,000 points per night, a 2-bedroom would cost 30,000 points per night. There was only 1 limitation of the program, and that was that the price for the nights that you wanted would have to be under $500 per bedroom per night. So, you could rent a 1-bedroom for 15,000 points if it was under $500, and you could rent a 2-bedroom for 30,000 points if it was under $1,000 per night.

That Wasn’t Going to Last

That was way too good of a deal. You could get maximum value for those Wyndham points at 3.3 cents per point when Wyndham points are normally valued at 1.1 cents per point. On top of that there are some great ways to earn Wyndham points, such as 8x on gas and 5x on utilities when using the Wyndham Business Earner card. In the case of the gas, if you were to earn 8x and then spend it at 3.3 cents per point, you would be getting 26.3% back and there is no way that is profitable. If you also take into account the 10% discount you get when redeeming points when you have a Wyndham Business Earner card it was like getting 29.6% back.

This deal was going to have to change. This felt like the kind of deal that happens if they were just trying to figure out a simple way to bring vacation rentals into the Wyndham points program. Once the word got out and people started to take advantage of it, they were going to have to change the program – it was inevitable. I was worried that they would go to a cash value system, where they would allow you to book Vacasas at 1 cent per point. That seemed to me to make the most sense from a business perspective, and while I would probably still use it occasionally, it wouldn’t have been great deal.

How Did they Devalue Vacasa/Wyndham?

One morning I was scrolling though Twitter and came across a post from Shawn Coomer at Miles to Memories titled “Vacasa Makes Negative Change to Wyndham Rewards Bookings“. Oh no, here it goes, one of the great deals in miles and points is gone. But after reading it I felt okay. What they did was lower the cap from $500 per night per bedroom to $350 per night per bedroom. The price is still 15,000 points per night per bedroom. What this means is the maximum value falls from 3.3 cents per point (3.7 with Wyndham Business Earner Card) to 2.3 cents per point (2.6 cents per point with Wyndham Business Earner card).

That may seem like a bummer, but I think it might actually be a blessing. I was very suspicious that they could keep this program the way it was because I didn’t believe that it could be profitable. If they have made this particular adjustment, I would assume that this should make the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership more sustainable. I actually feel better about building up balances of Wyndham points, because I feel there is a better chance that they won’t completely devalue Wyndham points or kill the partnership altogether.

How Much Does the Devaluation Hurt?

I think that the way to measure how big the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devaluation is to find out how many properties are suddenly unavailable for booking on points. What that means is, how many 1-bedroom properties are priced between $350 and $500 per night and how many 2-bedroom properties are priced between $700 and $1,000 per night. For this I’ll look at Hawaii during a spring break weekend in 2024.

There are 147 1-bedroom properties for rent on Vacasa for the weekend from March 15th through the 18th for up to $500 per night (bookable under the old rules). There are 136 properties for the same weekend for up to $350 per night (bookable under the new rules).

There are 126 2-bedroom properties for rent on Vacasa for the same weekend for up to $1,000 per night (bookable under old rules) and 124 2-bedroom properties for rent for up to $700 per night (bookable under new rules).

So with all of the handwringing about the changes to the program, people have lost access to 13 properties during a Spring Break weekend in Hawaii while still having access to 260 properties. Even though you are probably losing access to the nicest properties, that’s not a lot of properties in a time and place where vacation rentals tend to run very expensive. The sky isn’t exactly falling.

What might Be Around the Corner

The one thing that seems to be missing here is that the higher end Vacasas won’t be available for a points redemption. This could be an area where Wyndham could make changes in the future to allow for a higher point redemption for a more expensive property. For example, maybe they say that a vacation rental from $350 – $700 per bedroom costs 30,000 points per bedroom if they wanted to keep the point chart simple. But with this new devaluation, the higher end Vacasas are out of reach on points and allowing for a second tier would at least make them bookable.

Another potential devaluation I could see on the horizon for the Wyndham program would be the elimination of 8x on gas when using the Wyndham Business Earner card. It just seems so out of whack, that I can’t understand how that’s a good business move for them. I would expect them to drop it to 3x or 5x some time in the future.

Even if they made these changes, the Wyndham program would still be a great program. The redemption rates on Vacasas are still way more valuable than using them on Wyndham hotels and earning Wyndham points is still fairly easy to do. I’m obviously a big fan and still plan to use it for vacation rentals in the future.