Tag: Wyndham Points

Can Wyndham Points be a Great Deal for All-Inclusive Resorts?

Posted on by David Cox

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.

photo courtesy of Wyndhamhotels.com

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.

photo courtesy of Wyndhamhotels.com

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.

Why I’m Not Mad About the Vacasa Devaluation

Posted on by David Cox

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

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.

Should we keep Vacasa a secret?

Posted on by David Cox

** 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!

Bed 1
Bed 2

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!

The kitchen is nice and modern, definitely good enough for a weekend.

What would this have cost, normally?

This was going to be more than $1,350 for 3 nights.

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?