Booking Cottages.com via Wyndham Rewards

We’ve written plenty about booking Vacasa vacation rentals with Wyndham Rewards points, which can be a fantastic deal in the right scenarios. We’ve written far less about booking Cottages.com (at least not since one amazing and amazingly-limited promotion years ago) simply because we haven’t had occasion to take advantage of the partnership. I recently found myself in the market for a Cottages.com booking, so I went through the motions. In my experience, this isn’t nearly so straightforward as booking Vacasa rentals, but it can nonetheless present solid value for points — potentially a smidge better than Vacasa rentals (though keep in mind that while Vacasa vacation rentals are mostly found in the United States, you can only book Cottages.com rentals in the United Kingdom). Ultimately, I decided against booking right away because Vacasa redemption rates are changing soon, but Cottages.com redemption rates are not set to change, so I didn’t feel the pressure to book right away.

Wyndham’s other vacation rental partnerships

As noted above, we’ve written plenty about booking Vacasa vacation rentals through Wyndham Rewards. Those rentals are mostly located in the United States and you can read more about how to book them and how the value proposition will soon change some as well as a couple of examples of places we have booked in the past in these posts:

• Wyndham Vacasa: New 15K/30K award pricing as of 3/26/24
• How to book Vacasa vacation rentals with Wyndham points
• The Greenbrier Pigeon Forge Vacasa rental via Wyndham Rewards. Bottom line review.
• Bargain luxury in Hawaii: Greg’s Wyndham Vacasa experience

Though not often discussed, Wyndham also has a couple of other vacation rental partners in Cottages.com and Landal Greenparks. I haven’t looked far into Landal Greenparks — they appear to consist of cabin-style lodging at parks around Europe, but based on a handful of searches, they don’t appear to be a particularly strong value on points.

We first wrote about the partnership with Cottages.com more than seven years ago. I still remember that I was sitting in a hotel room in the dark trying not to wake up my wife as I desperately tried to contain my excitement over a limited-time promotion they ran where you could book an entire home (no matter how many bedrooms!) for just 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per night. That promotion was a one-time deal that was supposedly limited to the first 50 bookings and it happened back in the days when very few people had Wyndham credit cards (long before the “Earner” cards debuted). I booked a 9-bedroom villa in the English countryside for 15,000 Wyndham points per night and invited friends & family to chill in the English countryside for a couple of days. We played croquet, had a spot of tea, and tried our best to fit in.

However, that promotion was only meant to build some excitement for the partnership; under ordinary circumstances, cottages.com rentals cost 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per bedroom per night (so that 9-bedroom estate would have cost me 135,000 points per night if not for striking while the iron was hot on that promotion).

Sill, Cottages.com presents ample opportunity for very good value for points given that it has long been possible (and will continue to be possible!) to book Cottages.com vacation rentals for 15,000 points per bedroom per night.

Booking Cottages.com rentals through Wyndham Rewards: Key Things To Know

A few keys bits to know about booking Cottages.com vacation rentals through Wyndham Rewards:

1. You must book by phone (and it is not instant and isn’t necessarily easy to do!)
2. You can only book Cottages.com rentals in the United Kingdom (in the past, they also had rentals available in France and Italy, but now this is limited to the UK)
3. Rentals cost 15,000 points per bedroom per night, but if you hold a Wyndham Earner credit card, you should still get your 10% discount (and as such you’ll pay 13,500 points per bedroom per night)
4. The limit for Cottages.com rentals is $300 per bedroom per night. Units costing more than this are not available to book with Wyndham Rewards points. Unlike Vacasa vacation rentals, this cap is not changing at this time.
5. You can search for qualifying rentals here.

In order to book a Cottages.com property, you will need to call Wyndham Rewards at 1-866-232-8628 (though check this page in case the number changes).

When you call, be prepared first for some frustration (more on that in a moment), but also have the following information:

• Cottages.com rental location (as in the region)
• Cottages.com rental listing number
• Cottage name (each cottage is named)
• Check-in and check-out date
• Know the number of bedrooms (the agent should probably be able to see this, but I’m not convinced that they all can)

The short version of the story from there is that the Wyndham agent will take note of all of the above details and should send your reservation on to the Cottages.com team to confirm. I was told a couple of times that someone from Cottages.com would call me within 24-48 hours. In reality, I didn’t hear from them at all one time and another time I got an email from the Cottages.com team about 72 hours after the Wyndham agent sent through the request (you then need to confirm the booking with Cottages.com). The moral of the story is that you’ll need some patience to make one of these bookings — this is not a last-minute-booking option by any stretch.

Some example Cottages.com properties (and the “catch” in getting good value)

As noted above, you can book cottages costing up to $300 per bedroom per night for 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per night. I didn’t spend a long time hunting out examples, but here are a few places that caught my eye that might demonstrate the value here:

A treehouse in Scotland – link

At almost exactly $300 per night, this one-bedroom place looks like a cool use of 15K (or really 13.5K for cardholders) points per night! That’s a value of around 2c per point (or 2.22c per point for cardholders) and it looks like a unique experience!

Aurora “Barn” – link

At 1375 GBP for 3 nights in this 2-bedroom unit, you’d be getting a $1,750 value over 3 nights for a total of 90,000 Wyndham points (or 81,000 as a cardholder). One new card welcome bonus could nab a 3-night stay with 19,000 points left over.

Three bedroom modern apartment in southwest England – link

This property is an example of a relatively poor value with points. At 1385 GBP, this one costs about $1,763 for three nights, but as a 3-bedroom unit, it would cost you 45,000 points per night — that’s 135,000 points for the whole stay (or, if you’re an Earner cardholder, 121,500). That’s still 1.3c per point (or 1.45c as a cardholder).

However, and this is a big caveat. The examples above do not tell the whole story.

Prices for Cottages.com properties are not at all like hotel prices. Some (many?) units are priced at the cost of a weekly rental whether you stay for 3 nights or 7 nights. In some blocks, I assume between less-than-weeklong bookings, rentals might cost less for more nights. For instance, that last property above priced from 1385 GBP for 3 nights — but there was a 4-night stretch a couple of weeks beyond my initial search date for only 1,099 GBP.

That’s a double-edged sword.

It means that sometimes you’re not getting the great value it might initially appear (for example, I needed a 2-night stay for my booking and I later discovered that the cash rate for the property I selected was the same whether we stayed for 2 nights or stayed for 5 nights, so the value per point dipped significantly if we stayed longer!).

But on the other hand, it can mean that you might think a place is out of the qualifying price range, like really unique looking 2-bedroom property in Scotland…

As you can see above, for 2 nights in mid-June (from June 15-17), it costs 1620 GBP, which equals about $2,060. That would be more than $500 per bedroom per night and you wouldn’t be able to book it with Wyndham points.

But if you stay for four nights from June 15-19, it costs the same 1620 or $2,060. Now that’s $515 per night — or $257.50 per bedroom per night. You could indeed book four nights for 30K points per night (27K as a Wyndham Earner cardholder) — meaning that 120K points (or 108K points as an Earner cardholder) could get you a 4-night stay.

As it turns out, a 7-night stay is also 1620 GBP — at which point you’d be using 210,000 Wyndham points for a rental that would cost $2,060 — a value of just under 1c per point.

As you can see, whether these bookings are a good deal is going to vary wildly based on your needs and cottage availability. The point is that they can be a really good deal in some instances and there are some unique-looking properties.

My experience booking a Cottages.com rental through Wyndham Rewards

I’ve heard from a couple of readers over the years about their experiences in booking Cottages.com vacation rentals. For the most part, things have gone relatively smoothly for the readers who have shared their experiences with me, but my experience suggests that it may not always be smooth sailing. In fact, I might have thought that Wyndham hired the Turkish Miles & Smiles team to handle these bookings if I didn’t know better.

In a post about booking a Turkish Miles & Smiles award last year, I referenced the iconic closing lines of the monologue at the beginning of the 80’s TV show “The A Team”:

“If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them….maybe you can hire The A-Team!”

Queue up the music, because I believe that Wyndham has a Cottages.com A-Team, but it seems like no one else can help and I don’t have a map as to how you can find the A-Team. But if you need a vacation rental in the UK, they are your hope.

Here’s my story.

I first called a few weeks ago on a Saturday. I thought I had remembered something from a reader about how the Wyndham / Cottages.com team only works on weekdays, so I didn’t fully expect a Saturday phone call to work, but I had time and willingness to give it a shot.

I called the number above and a rep picked up quickly. I explained that I was looking to book a Cottages.com vacation rental with my Wyndham points and the agent made me verify my account details (things like name, address, Wyndham account number, how I earn most of my points….one agent later even asked me the last Wyndham property I stayed at (I couldn’t remember that!). After all that, they asked where the Wyndham property I wanted to book was located. I explained again that I was looking to book a Cottages.com property through their partnership with Cottages.com. After a little confusion, the rep said that she had to transfer me to the Cottages.com team.

When she transferred my call, I just got returned to another agent who ran through all the verification only to say that she had to transfer me to another team. When the third agent did the same verification song and dance, I explained that this was the third time I’d been through all that and asked if maybe the people who handle this aren’t working now and there was a way to find out their schedule. This third agent understood what I was saying and put me on hold forever coming back periodically saying that she was waiting for someone from the Cottages team to be able to pick up the call. Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes, she said she was able to connect me to them. She transferred over the call — and I got another general Wyndham Rewards rep who had to “transfer me to the Cottages.com department”. I explained that I’d been through this several times and I’d call back another day. She was quick to tell me that she could give me the direct phone number to the Cottages.com department. I had a moment of silly excitement….until she read back the same number I’d called. I ended that call and decided to try again another day.

On a weekday a few weeks ago, I gave it another go. Once again, I bounced from one general Wyndham Rewards rep to another. Around the third agent in, I explained everything that had happened again. She told me that I needed to call the Cottages.com team and she could give me the number. I proactively recited the number and told her that’s exactly the number I had called to end up on the phone with her and each of the previous Wyndham agents. To her credit, she started typing away in the background as though she was trying to figure out the right answer (rather than just repeating that I needed to call the same number, which is what I expected). I don’t know whether she found something in the employee manual or was able to contact someone who knew more than she did, but after a hold or two, she came back on and asked me for all of the info that I noted in the previous section — the property number, cottage name, dates, number of bedrooms, etc. She said I would receive a call within the next 24 to 48 hours from the Cottages.com team and to make sure I answered as they would be the ones to confirm the booking. She did verify that I’d still get the 10% discount for being a Wyndham Earner credit card holder — it sounded like she’d found the instructions for how to do this and we might be off to the races.

But 24-48 hours came and went with no word from the cottages team. In truth, I had only been 38% confident at best, so I wasn’t surprised not to hear back.

I waited another week and a half or so and called again. This time, the first representative I reached seemed to know exactly what I was talking about when I said that I wanted to book a Cottages.com rental! He did some typing and began asking for all of the pertinent information noted in the previous section. For what it’s worth, I called around 11:30am Eastern time — maybe it’ll increase your odds if you call on a weekday morning (no promises).

Oddly, he asked me how many points it should cost at one point. I told him that it’s two bedrooms, so I assumed 30,000 points per night but that I’d get the 10% discount for being a Wyndham Earner cardholder. I heard him repeat “Yes, 30,000 points per night” and at the end he repeated everything back to me and said he’d sent it off to the appropriate team already. He quoted the 30,000 points per night again and I said that I should get the 10% discount, so it should be 27,000 points per night. He said that the team that handles the booking would take care of that and informed me that I would hear from them within 24-48 hours.

The good news is that this final agent did indeed know how to submit the reservation properly. Unfortunately, the Cottages team did not adjust the pricing, so when I heard back (via email, not 24-48 but rather 72 hours later), they quoted me 60,000 points for two nights instead of the 54,000 points I expected.

Based on previous reader data points, I am confident that Earner cardholders do qualify for the 10% discount (readers have told me they’ve gotten that discount on these bookings), so I’m sure that I could have pushed back and gotten that discount. As it turns out, I changed my mind on the booking.

Why I’m temporarily holding off on booking Cottages.com rentals

In the time since I called to try to book a Cottages.com vacation rental (and thankfully before the Cottages.com team wrote me to confirm the booking!), Wyndham came out with huge new welcome offers on their credit cards for up to 75K-100K points after low minimum spend requirements on their consumer cards or up to 100K points after much bigger spend on the business card. My wife and I both have the Wyndham Earner Business card, but neither of us has a Wyndham consumer card. The 100K offer after only $2K spend on the Wyndham Earner Plus card in particular seems like a pretty fantastic offer that wouldn’t require much effort at all to earn. To be clear, we do not have affiliate links for any of those cards — I mention them because they are great offers that swayed my decision here.

As I waited to hear back from the Cottages.com team, we at Frequent Miler also followed up with Wyndham and learned about the fact that the award adjustments coming to Vacasa Vacation rentals on March 26th will not affect Cottages.com bookings. That made me re-prioritize my travel planning.

I noticed a one-bedroom Vacasa booking of a little over $300 per night that would work for a getaway we’re planning and I realized that the price of that Vacasa rental will increase from the current 15K points per night (which is really 13,500 points per night for Wyndham Earner cardholders) to 30K points per night (which is really 27K points per night for Wyndham Earner cardholders) when the Vacasa pricing scheme changes in a couple of weeks. However, the price of my desired Cottages.com rentals will remain unchanged — rentals costing up to $300 per bedroom per night will continue to cost 15,000 points per bedroom per night.

In short, I realized that it made more sense to use my current stash of Wyndham points for a Vacasa rental before the changes go into effect and just apply for a new Wyndham Earner Plus card to replenish my points so I can make a Cottages.com booking soon enough. Given the low $2,000 minimum spending requirement to earn 100,000 points on the Wyndham Earner Plus card with the current offer, I imagine I could easily earn that welcome bonus as soon as my first statement cuts, likely replacing the points within about a month. Given that there are a few Cottages.com properties that would work for my needs, I decided that it would be worth a risk to hold off on my Cottages.com booking for now in favor of squeezing a bit more value out of Vacasa while I can.

To be clear, the adjustments to Vacasa pricing aren’t actually a very big deal in my opinion. and you can listen to last weekend’s Frequent Miler on the Air podcast for more on our thoughts about why it isn’t. Still, I saw the chance to hopefully have my cake and eat it, too.

Bottom line

Wyndham Rewards has a niche partnership with Cottages.com whereby members can redeem Wyndham Rewards points for vacation rentals across the United Kingdom. Given that one can redeem 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per bedroom per night for a rental unit costing up to $300 per bedroom per night, this can make for a very good use of Wyndham points in parts of the UK. The good news is that there are no coming changes to these redemptions, so even though Wyndham’s other major vacation rentals will see some coming changes later this month, Cottages.com will still yield the same solid value for the time being.

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