Wyndham data structure, with MEMBER as central to the data schema, was flawed from the start, imo. I don't understand why they didn't correctly start off with the concept of accounts just like a bank or stock brokerage. It's easier and much more elegant to specify rules for each type of account. They can accord privileges at the Account level and some more aggregate privileges at the Member level just like BoA does with its Preferred Rewards program. I don't know why Wyndham IT ignored 'best practices' well known in many industries. If I can see it without the benefit looking at their DB specs, I am sure there are people in Wyndham IT who see it too.
It's historical baggage or bad foundation but nobody there seems to be willing to confront it head-on. Or, that's exactly what they are planning to do. Why else would they spend millions of dollars? Spending more money on Voyager frontend without fixing the structural flaws in the backend will cost them in the long run.
Let's see if I am right and the smart people at Wyndham IT boldly go where they had been reluctant to go before.
In many of our dreams IT would be given all the information they need, sufficient interaction with actual owners to see how to make things work the best way possible, and the higher ups would listen to them.
The old adage follow the money usually applies. Ron P. once told me that it wasn't done that way to start with because of the number of people worked at various levels with Fairfield then Wyndham who were in a position to benefit from it and did. Many of us are well aware that pretty much anyone in Wyndham can look at our accounts and easily tell what we purchased developer and what was resale from the way they are number coded.
Sorry everyone but I'm doing it again with giving him background information. Back from when Voyager went live to now the topic of the website has seen a tremendous amount of discussion. With people who have extensive IT and web design backgrounds weighing in. The PTB, Powers That Be, in Wyndham didn't understand what IT was telling them and weren't willing to allocate the money for IT to do what needed done. Their sole answer has been well just fix it, like it's that easy. They didn't or refused to understand that anything that IT does is putting lipstick on a pig. You may not know this but the old system still exists alongside Voyager and Wyndham still actively uses it because the new system can't do some of the things the old one did.
Our resident experts have said that Wyndham didn't or wouldn't understand that a system that has had as many patches and fixes as this one has is fraught with never ending problem. I remember posting that after two years of our account being fixed an old problem had resurfaced. Someone explained why this happens. After Voyager came online we were one of the many owners who were unable to access our accounts and it took months to get all the issues resolved. In our case it took two months. I got weekly phone calls with them having me follow their instructions to test what was working in our account as it should and what still needed fixed. One of the issues I remember the most was the reservation that no one could get to cancel. A month after the check in date passed it was still showing as a current reservation. If I remember correctly Wyndham gave us a one time point award for our inconvenience and patience during those two months all the issues were being fixed. To this day a couple of times a year one of the issues will reoccur. I will randomly have a reservation disappear and when that happens there will be at least one other reservation showing twice. It will stay that way for a few weeks and then everything will be okay again.
A huge problem is that the people who designed the current website were dealing with too many of the executive level decision makers listening to too much sales/marketing input and concerns. Clearly neither they nor the IT people responsible for design of the new website had a good or clear concept of needs and wants of the owners who actually use the website. The decision makers saw the pretty pictures on the opening page and were sold. The not so funny part is that those pictures and having to scroll down to get past them has been one of the things that irritated owners a lot.
One of the biggest touted benefits to VIP owners was supposed to be that they could request specific unit numbers if that unit was available. But the epic fail is that they never gave those owners the necessary information to be able to do that. In the resort information there should have been layouts of the resorts with the unit numbers and types of those units. Some of us have those charts for some resorts that we got from the salespeople so clearly in some cases they already exist and it wouldn't have been that hard to do.
At the next two owners meetings Wyndham had their people, some of them IT people I hope, sitting down with owners to have them explain what they wanted and needed the website to do and how the current website failed to meet those wants and needs. That made it very clear to even us non experts how severely handicapped the designers had been with not knowing what they needed to know when they designed the website. We also learned from our resident experts how often IT is forced to tweak things to better suit in this case sales and marketing. How they are rarely listened to when the advise the PTB that certain things won't work.
I was very unimpressed with the announcement that Wyndham proudly made about how they are investing millions into IT and the website is now 50%? faster. I wouldn't have cared if the website was 50% slower if many of the issues were fixed.