Tag Archives for wyndham.
A guest checked into the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan in 2018. He wouldn’t leave, and keeps getting the hotel’s deed transferred into the name of a non-profit he created. He’s tried to take possession of the hotel’s bank accounts and even gone to its lenders to borrow against the property. And the city’s administration and courts even, in part, backed him up.
A year ago rumors began that Phish was launching a festival in Dover, Delaware. People booked hotel rooms for August 15 – 18 in advance of 45,000 fans swarming the town.
That got them regular rates on rooms. These aren’t mistake rates. They paid what a hotel normally cost.
Marriott Bonvoy (inclusive of former Starwood members) is the largest program while Hilton Honors has been growing quickly and catching up. Accor’s loyalty program – which is newer than the others – is small for the chain’s size. And while World of Hyatt is the smallest among these 7 hotel groups, it hits substantially above its weight, something that’s true both for program membership and for its co-brand credit card deal.
Both chains are more booking platforms than hoteliers, since they not only don’t own hotels they generally don’t run them either, preferring to franchise. Choice currently has over 7,000 properties and Wyndham over 9,000.
Did you know that Wyndham has a secret Titanium elite level? Do you know how early check-in, late check-out, and upgrades are supposed to work? And how much hotels get charged for your points, and paid when you stay on a free night?
When you arrive at baggage claim and your luggage is more than you can push yourself, many airports around the world have carts for you to use for free. In the U.S. it’s far more common for you to pay to use a cart, like one from SmarteCarte. You’ll pay around $5 to release the cart at a nearby station, and then you can move your bags from the carousel to your ground transportation. Someone has to collect the carts, and then they get re-rented again.
But what if that $5 paid to rent the cart for an indefinite period of time?
Hotel chains aren’t pushing guests to tip out of affection for their lowest-paid employees. They’re doing it as a way of controlling owner costs. The CEO of one hotel group even says they need guests to tip more – so they don’t have to raise wages.
Wyndham can be useful for home rental stays (generally 15,000 points per bedroom per night). Aeromexico is limited use, but there are some use cases. The most useful promotion here is with LifeMiles – reasonable award chart, no fuel surcharges, and awards across Star Alliance.
Barclays has introduced a refreshed suite of Wyndham credit cards and they’ve done as good a job as possible considering the limitation that they’re working with Wyndham, a motley collection of brands and a loyalty program that last year doubled the redemption cost of its best hotels.
Wyndham Rewards is extending all current elite member status through December 31, 2021. Many of us noted that Marriott was last to extend status, but that’s not true. Don’t forget Wyndham!
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
