Wyndham Rewards award chart changes on 3/26/24, not being bought by Choice

The most notable news last week when it comes to Wyndham Rewards is that redemptions for Vacasa stays would be changing.

At that same time, Wyndham announced that they’d be making some award chart changes on the same date – March 26, 2024 – while just yesterday Choice announced that they’re dropping their bid for Wyndham.

Award Chart Changes

The changes in Wyndham’s award chart will be – fingers crossed – fairly minimal. Loyalty Lobby confirms that 3% of properties will be increasing in price, while 4% will be getting lower award pricing.

That seems like a net win, but Wyndham is being fairly secretive about these changes as they haven’t disclosed which hotels will have their categories changing. As a reminder, Wyndham has three levels of award pricing – 7,500 points, 15,000 points and 30,000 points per night. It could be that the properties reducing in price are dropping from 15,000 points per night to 7,500, while the 3% of properties increasing could be going from 15,000 points to 30,000 points. If that were the case, that could end up being a net (albeit overall minor) devaluation, but we don’t know if that’s what’ll happen.

These changes will be taking effect on March 26, 2024. If you book a stay before that date and the property you book goes up in price, your already lower price will be locked in. If the hotel you book subsequently has its category level drop, Wyndham will proactively refund you the extra points. That’s something Hyatt does too and is commendable, but it’s particularly surprising that Wyndham takes the initiative in that way, so props to them for that.

I’m curious as to how sophisticated Wyndham’s systems are with those points refunds for people who are eligible for a 10% discount on award stays by virtue of having an eligible Wyndham credit card. For example, let’s say you book a stay at a 30,000 per night property and you have a Wyndham Rewards Earner Business credit card. That redemption would cost you 27,000 points per night courtesy of the 10% discount. If that property drops to the 15,000 point redemption level, Wyndham would refund 15,000 points for non-cardholders. Would that be the case for cardholders too, or will they refund 13,500 points which would be the correct amount as it would take into account the 10% discount? It would be nice if they inadvertently refunded 15,000 points per night rather than 13,500, but I’ve no idea if that’s how it’ll work.

Regardless of how that’ll work, it’ll be worth booking Wyndham award stays by March 25 as there’s no downside to doing that.

Choice Dropping Bid To Buy Wyndham

Last year Choice announced that they wanted to buy Wyndham. While that somewhat made sense to me in terms of the quality of the hotel brands in both chains, I don’t think many of us were keen on that purchase going through, particularly because of the impact it could’ve had on Vacasa bookings.

If you were of a similar view, good news came out yesterday that Choice is dropping their purchase bid for Wyndham. Apparently less than 20% of Wyndham shareholders were of the belief that Choice had rodeway inn too far with their takeover attempt and that there wasn’t enough quality inn Choice’s bid and so they rejected the clarion call. As a result, Choice has decided to park (inn) their takeover attempt which provides some comfort to us. The stock market apparently agreed as both Choice and Wyndham had their share prices ascend yesterday which is pretty rad(isson). That will help shareholders in both companies to rest easy and sleep inn today.

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