A week after revamping its credit card lineup and launching a new $395 annual fee premium card, Wyndham made another big announcement today.
From September 15, 2026, award night pricing will range from 5,000 to 45,000 points per night.
New Wyndham Rewards pricing tiers
At present, Wyndham Rewards has three award night pricing tiers: 7,500 points, 15,000 points, and 30,000 points. From September 15, that’ll be increased to four tiers.
The 7,500 points tier will be reduced to only 5,000 points per night, the 15,000 and 30,000 point tiers will remain the same, and a brand new 45,000 points tier will be added.
While it’s disappointing that award pricing at some properties will soon require 45,000 points per night, it’s not entirely surprising that Wyndham Rewards is choosing to implement this change. Wyndham has maintained its straightforward 7,500 / 15,000 / 30,000 award pricing structure for seven years. Before that, all award nights cost a flat 15,000 points per night. With rampant points inflation and dynamic award pricing (and pseudo-dynamic pricing) ratcheting up across pretty much all hotel loyalty programs, it’s nice that there’s still at least one major program with a simple and straightforward award chart.
The 45,000 points per night cloud does have a silver lining. The lowest award night tier currently costs 7,500 points per night. From September 15, that requirement will drop to 5,000 points per night. Those lowest category properties in the US are often hotels you wouldn’t be too keen to spend the night at. Overseas though, those lowest category hotels can often by much more respectable. For example, I was able to book a Ramada in Munich for Oktoberfest last year for only 7,500 points per night when the cash price was otherwise more than $450 per night.
Being able to book those kinds of hotels for only 5,000 points per night will be awesome and could prove to be excellent value considering how cheaply Wyndham frequently sells its points. Its points can often be bought for ~0.7 cents per point; that would make a 5,000 point property cost only $35 worth of purchased points.
Some hotels will change category
Needless to say, with a brand new award pricing tier being introduced, some existing properties will be increasing in price on September 15. Wyndham Rewards has advised that it’ll be conducting a revaluation of hotels across all four tiers, with some moving up a category, some moving down, and some staying the same.
Unlike some previous years, they haven’t provided a specific number with regards to how many hotels will be increasing in category and how many will be decreasing. Hopefully that’s not a bad sign. We reached out to Wyndham to see if those were figures they were willing to disclose; unfortunately they weren’t.
Award pricing for existing bookings will be honored, refunds given where applicable
As would be expected, if you book an award stay before these changes take place, that pricing will be honored even if the property increases in price post-September 15.
If the property you booked decreases in price, Wyndham will automatically provide a refund of those excess redeemed points.
Book award nights from only 3,750 points per night
One of the benefits on the new Wyndham Rewards Earner Premier card is a 25% discount on award nights. That means that a 5,000 point night will only require 3,750 points per night which could be excellent value depending on the property. If buying Wyndham points when they’re on sale for 0.7 cents per point, 3,750 points would cost just $26.25.
That 25% discount will also help mitigate some of the impact of the 45,000 point pricing tier as it’ll reduce the nightly award rate to 33,750 points. That’s obviously not anywhere near as good as the existing top tier of 30,000 points being reduced to 22,500 points per night, but it does make the Wyndham Premier card more compelling than it was a week ago if you’re likely to book properties that are at the top end of Wyndham’s award pricing.
Question
Are you excited about the prospect of being able to book awards for 5,000 points per night (or less with a 10%-25% discount from a Wyndham credit card), or are you bemoaning the fact that the properties you’ve been eyeing up are likely to increase to 45,000 points per night? Let us know in the comments below.
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Seems like a pretty good program if you’re living out of hotels for work. Not so great if you’re a leisure traveler looking to do a prestige booking for vacay.
It should be illegal for loyalty programs to devalue on a whim, as they usually do. Devaluations should be proportional with price inflation; otherwise these are not loyalty programs; they’re bait and switch schemes with no oversight.
This seems like a good way for all programs to become dynamically priced.
Grab those Wyndham cards now, earn the SUB, and book ASAP!
Don’t forget about the Wells Fargo to Wyndham Rewards transfer ratio of 1:2, so you can cut the price points in half if you plan to transfer points from Wells Fargo. Then you can apply the 10-25% discount on the award stay, depending on which Wyndham Rewards CC you have.
At the low end the 5,000 point level almost feels like the IHG PointBreaks of old. It will be interesting to see what Days Inn, Super 8, or Travelodge in the middle of nowhere qualifies.
You will be hard pressed to find a US 5k Wyndham you’d want to stay at. That said, in a few remote places, you’d be fine for a night. Overseas, the opportunities get more interesting.
Not a fan of those upcoming changes.
Most likely a bunch of 30k-properties convert with 50% premium to 45k points per night.
Also most likely only handful will go down to 5k/nt.
And to make it even worse, Wyndham will devalue 15k-hotels to 30k category, without a good cause. They just getting more greedy, similar to Hyatt and Hilton.
Well, Marriott mostly crashed it’s loyalty program few years ago. Not many cares about them anymore (handful of Lifetime Plats possibly;))
Hyatt gutted it’s own chart this year.
Hilton keeps devaluing their Honor points with some properties costing a million points…
And Sonesta converted all branded credit cards – so people have no easier way to earn points.
The hotel loyalty world is getting less and less attractive…
Wyndham was staying a promising brand, but after quitting their AirBnB flick (expected, and they still have Cottages.com), they seem to turn to wrong direction. Hopefully not too drastic so people still can use their points system.
Happy travels!!
I think Wyndham is paying close attention to what Hyatt is doing and figuring out how they can monopolize on the Hyatt changes. A friend has stayed a some Wyndham and Hyatt all inclusives and thought they were comparable.
I have yet to stay at a Wyndham property that I thought was worth 30,000 points. At 45,000 points, I will just book IHG, Marriott or Hyatt.
They need to drop some of three US properties from 30k to 15k. No way a la Quinta or Wingate should be 30k points a night. I have my eye on a Wyndham garden in Guatemala City for next year. Hopefully it stays at 15k.
Correct. There really should be no 30K La Quintas. I assume nobody stays at them on points because their room rates are usually only about $20 more than the next best Wyndham in town which is only priced at 15K.
Wyndham is the new Hyatt.
If only Wyndham Diamond status had the perks of Hyatt Globlalist. I think my Wyndham status got me some water and Cheese-Its once.
Not sure why the 7.5k Munich redemption was mentioned since that hotel is already at 15k. I was recently looking for options in Germany and I think I saw maybe 2 hotels in the areas I was looking that were 7.5k.
I hadn’t realized they’d increased its price since staying there last fall.
With the Earner card you get a 15% discount on buying points. So If you buy points with the Earner Card and then redeem with the premier card, a 5000 point room would cost 15% less than your stated $26.25, no? If I am correct that you could stay for $22.31 per night. Do this for 15 night for a total cost of around $334, that would get you Wyndham diamond allowing you to match to Caesar diamond. If this is the case, I would find this an attractive way to get Caesars diamond.
You do get a 15% discount when buying points with a Wyndham card, but only when there’s not a sale on Wyndham points. You therefore sadly can’t stack both the ~0.7 cents per point pricing and the additional 15% discount. As a result, the ~0.7 cents per point pricing is basically as good as it gets.
Wyndham Diamond status also requires 40 nights per year; 15 nights is for Platinum status.
Aw man, thanks for the details.
7k point properties are a rarity. And as mentioned, staying in one while in the US is often a nightmare.
No!!!! Almost certainly Wyndham Grand Clearwater will go up to 45k points. That is a huge devaluation!
Got my eye on that one too. Plan to book it before the deval.
I have stayed at Grand Clearwater which is the top domestic hotel in the Wyndham portfolio. Definitely going to 45k.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this.
-They gave almost 3 months notice of the change, during which we can book.
-As you note, they will automatically credit price drops (following Hyatt’s lead).
-They almost had to devalue somewhat, given bigger point discounts for cardholders and cheaper selling prices for points.
Obviously, we’ll need to see how many new properties hit the top tier, and what other adjustments they make before rendering a final judgement. But this could have been much worse, and I appreciate the transparency..