No, it's not an us vs. them post. You do come across that way, and you keep talking about Michael Brown as though you know him personally. It was not meant to be an accusation at all. I thought you might be trying to shed a light on the changes as they relate to Wyndham's side. You did the same thing when changes were made to the computer system a while back, if that was indeed you.
I suppose I may come across that way to you
, and likely to others that have been around here for a long time and are likely in the "old crew" bucket. But I also suspect that's not the observation many other newer TUG forum members arrive at in comparison. Perhaps that should tell us all something about our perspectives with regard to the TUG Wyndham forum culture at least - and the fact that it is changing. Old vs new. Neither is inherently wrong - but the new will likely outnumber the old over time - and the new perspectives will ultimately therefore win out. My goal is to change the "us vs them" perspective to a "let's work together" perspective - and that is what I am and always will be working toward.
With regard to my comments about Wyndham's leadership and specifically Michael Brown, I've been working in corporate America for 30 years now. Whenever a new CEO is installed - the entire culture of the company changes in the ensuing years. The CEO drives the culture and drives changes within every corporation I've ever worked for - and often those changes are
significant in scope - especially given the fact that change rates are accelerating in the modern business world. I also read most of the investor relations materials released by Wyndham - and I attend the quarterly investor relations conference calls during which the CEO makes statements about where T&L is going - such as the recent statements made about subscription models for vacation sales (which another thread on TUG already outlined). It's all out there for anyone to read at any time. Wyndham is a public company and is required to publish the meeting notes and statements made. If you actually go read those statements - nothing I'm saying here is new information to those who want to be informed.
That said, I try to stay informed. Seek first to understand before being understood. Since I've been interacting with several Wyndham execs over the past few years - I've gotten a pretty solid sense of the culture change - both from the new hires to the folks that have been there for quite some time. The culture
is changing quite a bit - and it's being driven by the ELT - as is to be expected. That's the benefit of building bridges - you get to truly understand both sides of the equation - and attempt to actually resolve problems and challenges. Those who don't want to make such efforts tend to post their grievances on public forums like TUG - and while I don't personally see this as productive in and of itself - I also
need such feedback in order to bring the core complaints to Wyndham in a productive manner.
I've never actually met nor interacted directly with Michael Brown other than via a couple of emails sent to his address - which he actually almost never reads directly himself - he has an entire crew of people who manage his inbox and respond to messages - at least that's my current understanding. Yes - he does read some emails and yes he does respond to some emails - but the majority of his responses - aren't directly written by him. I've had limited interaction with the COO, CSMO, and CBO (listed here:
https://investor.travelandleisureco.com/governance/our-leadership/default.aspx) It is a bit unusual for me to interact with the ELT as they are focused largely on strategy whereas most of what I want to focus on is more operational and tactical in nature. Therefore I tend to interact more directly with folks a level or two underneath the ELT that are responsible for various departmental aspects within the Wyndham business. I interact most often with SMEs who have the most knowledge on particular subjects - and this is a growing list of folks over time as we hit on an increasingly larger variety of subject matters for guidance.
Lastly, as
@paxsarah said - Richelle and I championed the website fix list back in May 2020 in an effort to help Wyndham improve the website experience. Honestly, we had mixed results from TUG participation - because that's when we learned beyond any shadow of a doubt - that a particularly voal subset of TUG members don't represent the majority. As others have repeatedly said here on this thread - there are many commercial renters here on TUG - most of which aren't posting much of anything - but those who are here and did post on website issues - were asking for functions that Wyndham explicitly removed from the new website - and for reasons that should be increasingly apparent given the recent VIP resale contract changes. Wyndham isn't going to allocate significant resources delivering functionalities that fall into the 1% ownership category - especially if those owner accounts making the ask are facilitating a ton of rental activity. Again, old vs new. The new will win out - it's just a question of when - and its abundantly clear to me at least, that the Wyndham ELT is pushing to eliminate commercial renters from their timeshare business.