Is it worth it to use Club Wyndham points for hotel stays?

[zinck]

I am a Silver Club Wyndham Plus owner. My wife and I want to take a road trip in early May to Northern Michigan then drive to Niagara Falls then down towards Knoxville, TN. Looking at the actual Club Wyndham Resorts there doesn't seem to be many places for us to stay.

So how much "bang for our buck (or points)" would we get using our Wyndham points for hotel stays along the way? I don't even know exactly how this works as we have never done it before.

Thank you for your help!
Larry

 

[Floridaman76]

You have to convert your club wyndham points into Wyndham rewards points first, and the conversion rate is awful. It's 1000 Club Wyndham points converts to 400 Wyndham Rewards points.

And the average hotel cost is 15,000 points per night. So it will cost you roughly 38,000 Club Wyndham points for one night stay in a likely mediocre hotel.

To me, that's an awful deal and not worth it. You can do the math on what you are paying per 1000 for maintenance fees and see this is not worth it.

I use the Wyndham Rewards credit card to pay my MF and use it for pretty much everything else, so I generate enough WR points to use it for hotels. But those stays are in effect free for me.

 

[CO skier]

I am a Silver Club Wyndham Plus owner. My wife and I want to take a road trip in early May to Northern Michigan then drive to Niagara Falls then down towards Knoxville, TN. Looking at the actual Club Wyndham Resorts there doesn't seem to be many places for us to stay.

You have an RCI membership as a Club Wyndham owner. Have you ever used it? It would be a better use of your Club Wyndham points than converting to Wyndham Rewards.

There is a rare Niagara Falls area exchange available at Tamarack Club in Ellicottville, NY for May 16-23 (an even more rare coincidence).

There is a lot of RCI Extra Holidays May availability at The Inn at St. Ives in Stanwood, MI -- May 9-16 1 Bedroom $350, May 23-30 1 Bedroom $880.

You will want to grab that Tamarack Club as soon as possible. If you prefer Michigan after Niagara Falls, you could probably watch for a price reduction on that May 23-30 week at The Inn at St. Ives.

 

[zinck]

You have to convert your club wyndham points into Wyndham rewards points first, and the conversion rate is awful. It's 1000 Club Wyndham points converts to 400 Wyndham Rewards points.

And the average hotel cost is 15,000 points per night. So it will cost you roughly 38,000 Club Wyndham points for one night stay in a likely mediocre hotel.

To me, that's an awful deal and not worth it. You can do the math on what you are paying per 1000 for maintenance fees and see this is not worth it.

I use the Wyndham Rewards credit card to pay my MF and use it for pretty much everything else, so I generate enough WR points to use it for hotels. But those stays are in effect free for me.

Thank you!

 

[zinck]

You have an RCI membership as a Club Wyndham owner. Have you ever used it? It would be a better use of your Club Wyndham points than converting to Wyndham Rewards.

There is a rare Niagara Falls area exchange available at Tamarack Club in Ellicottville, NY for May 16-23 (an even more rare coincidence).

There is a lot of RCI Extra Holidays May availability at The Inn at St. Ives in Stanwood, MI -- May 9-16 1 Bedroom $350, May 23-30 1 Bedroom $880.

You will want to grab that Tamarack Club as soon as possible. If you prefer Michigan after Niagara Falls, you could probably watch for a price reduction on that May 23-30 week at The Inn at St. Ives.

I have never used RCI. Is that where all these places you mention here are listed?
We actually want to be in, near Holland, Michagan for the tulip festival the first week in May. And we might not want to stay the full week. We also want to spend a few days in London, Ontario to see a play there before spending a couple of days near Niagra Falls. But had not planned to stay 7 days in any one place.

 

[ShawnH]

I guess the question if its worth it really depend on if those points are going to expire or not. And even then it seems like a better prospect to move them to RCI or even maintenance fees then convert to rewards points for room use. As someone pointed out the cost per thousand in maintenance fees alone seem to make it a better "value" to just pay for rooms then convert those points. To me even if you had to use them in RCI for a week and only stayed 3 days it would seem a better trade off. But everyones situation is different.

 

[am1]

I did 4 million Wyndham points when all hotels were 15k a night. Still have some left. My cost was $0.

 

[CO skier]

I did 4 million Wyndham points when all hotels were 15k a night.

That was then (irrelevant ancient history); this thread is now -- see post #2.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Something else to keep in mind: Club Wyndham Timeshares, in my opinion, are usually very nice.

Wyndham branded hotels on the other hand:

 

[am1]

That was then (irrelevant ancient history); this thread is now -- see post #2.

I just stated what I did. Never said what they should do.

 

[kaljor]

Larry, I have some experience in what you're asking. There is no real value in exchanging Wyndham points for Wyndham Rewards points. Wyndham Rewards points are what you need to stay in Wyndham hotels. If you can find decent Wyndham hotels along your planned route, you're far better off simply paying the hotel cost. And if you don't have any Rewards points already, through using a Rewards credit card, I would just say forget about using points for hotel stays.

Oddly enough the opposite way can work really. really well. If you amass a large number of Rewards points, you can get a great value using those at Wyndham Resorts. Subject to availability, and obviously availability is nonexistent in the prime season at each resort. But great deals can absolutely be found, depending on when and where you travel.

Other great advice: get yourself a Hilton and/or a Marriott card and/or a IHG credit card. Learn how they work and you can find ways for staying free or cheap on road trips. So many credit cards, so many wrinkles in each. You would really have to examine the costs and benefits carefully.

 

[Floridaman76]

Oddly enough the opposite way can work really. really well. If you amass a large number of Rewards points, you can get a great value using those at Wyndham Resorts. Subject to availability, and obviously availability is nonexistent in the prime season at each resort. But great deals can absolutely be found, depending on when and where you travel.

Exactly this. There are a decent number of Wyndham resorts you can stay at for 7500 points per night. Sea Gardens, Palm Aire and Cypress Palms in Florida are some of them. And the Wyndham HOTELS that you can stay at for 7500 points per night are complete dumps. Even many of the 15000 points hotels are dumps. Many of the better hotels got moved to the 30000 point tier.

You can usually go to an "update" and get between 30,000-45,000 WR points, that can go a long way if you leverage them at resorts for 7500 pts per night

 

[paxsarah]

Exactly this. There are a decent number of Wyndham resorts you can stay at for 7500 points per night. Sea Gardens, Palm Aire and Cypress Palms in Florida are some of them. And the Wyndham HOTELS that you can stay at for 7500 points per night are complete dumps. Even many of the 15000 points hotels are dumps. Many of the better hotels got moved to the 30000 point tier.

You can usually go to an "update" and get between 30,000-45,000 WR points, that can go a long way if you leverage them at resorts for 7500 pts per night

Although keep in mind that in the case of overbooking, Wyndham Rewards (or other 3rd party bookings) will be canceled before owner reservations made with timeshare points. It's probably not an issue most of the time, but there's coincidentally an example of this right now in the Club Wyndham owners Facebook group where an owner booked with Wyndham Rewards at Palm Aire and were canceled due to overbooking. I'd see that as an example of the system working the way it's supposed to (prioritizing owners booked with timeshare points), but it doesn't help the person who got bumped.

 

[kaljor]

I'm sure you're right, but the only time I see Rewards points being available to use at resorts is in the off season or more realistically, the off, off season. It has always worked for me, but if i were denied once, OK, but a second time would absolutely make me end my participation in the Rewards program. I would keep the card for the savings on my Maintenance Fees but i would divorce myself from the Wyndham Rewards program and continue my searching for stays with my Hilton Honors, or IHG, or Marriott programs.

In the end, one probably saves the same amount of money utilizing any of these hotel programs if you research rates at comparable hotels,

To sum up, lack of availability when booking is one thing, but being denied a room when i have a confirmed reservation twice would be the end of my business relationship with that entity. Obviously excepting natural causes, whatever they might be.

 

[kaljor]

I think its considered bad form to reply to one's own post, but I just remembered something pertinent to this discussion. My Rewards Points reservation was cancelled earlier this year. It was at Cypress Palms and I was going there with some family members back in February of this year. We all got a phone call in the morning saying they couldn't honor the reservations. I honestly don't remember the reason they gave because they didn't abandon us, they had made arrangements to put us up at a nearby Westgate resort. That resort was perfectly fine, I don't remember any specific plus or minus. I've never been to Cypress Palms before so I wasn't missing anything.

So just another data point. We weren't left out in the cold when they could not honor the original reservation.