New Wyndham Website (2020)

[HitchHiker71]

I use a desk top for searching and making reservations. Almost impossible to find and make a reservation without it in my opinion.

I respectfully disagree - I use my smartphone for almost all of my Wyndham transactions - and while the old site was not perfect - it was good enough for me to easily make reservations and perform availability searches without any major issues.

As someone who builds and manages cloud apps for a living - it is widely accepted today that if you’re not designing for smartphone content consumption as your primary audience - you are missing the mark and will not see widespread adoption of your application. The industry statistics prove this out as well. Obviously there are exceptions for complex applications that require a lot more screen real estate, but Wyndham doesn’t fall into this category - no one in the hospitality sector does.


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[MikeandLisaR]

Glad to know I wasn’t the only one that thought the last update was awful. This one is just as bad, maybe worse. We kept telling them when they wanted to get us into an owners “update” that until they fix the website we wouldn’t attend. Likely highest impact. Gave feedback on website. Unknown impact.

Some of the problems I see, besides the one others have stated.

• Clicking the flexible dates box doesn’t seem to have any impact, doesn’t work yet maybe?
• Hard to search resorts.
• Availability calendar missing.
• Hard to search for resorts you’re not familiar with.
• Zooming on map and clicking “search this area” the map changes when it searches. Should stay on same map as the one clicked on.

Hope we don’t have to wait a year or so for them to get it fixed like last time.

I wonder. Does “Wyndham” benefit from owners not being able to book rooms? Where does the money go when they rent non-owner occupied rooms? A coupe months ago I noticed a tag at the bottom of the old website saying “This advertising material is being used for the purpose of soliciting the sale of time-share property or interest in time-share property” Is there a way to get to having an owner website and not a seller one?
Wyndham has a good product. If they would end their high price, high rewards sells tactics they could sell their time shares easily and not have to “hard sell” 100 people to make one sell. Oh well, at least we’ll have an excuses to bypass the “owner update” for awhile again.

 

[schoolmarm]

I use my laptop almost exclusively for just about everything except for those shopping rebate apps you have to use your phone for.

This morning I logged in to see if I thought it was better. NOPE.
But I put in Toledo, Ohio for my location, after it thought that I was in Florida again, and it pulled up the Pittsburgh Wyndham Grand hotel...AND....drum roll...CHICAGO. Cripes, people, it's not even a Wyndham anymore.

And the Owner's Directory is hidden WAY at the bottom right side of the Navy blue "menu box" at the bottom of the screen by where they say "this material is to solicit timeshare sales". VERY bottom right...under Publications. And it is not even the first listing.

Glad I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. BTW, if you ARE going somewhere, lots of resorts have 20-35% off from now until December 31.

 

[HitchHiker71]

I'm on here and the Facebook groups a lot, so if someone has a question or issue and I want to see what they're talking about or provide them a screenshot, if my phone is in my hand then my phone is how I visit the owner website. But if I'm booking or researching something for myself, I usually make it a point to use my computer. So according to Wyndham, I'm probably adding to the majority of mobile website use, but I find the desktop website better for the uses that are most important to me. I'm sure they have no way to measure that.

Proper UAT should capture sentiment like this during testing - but this really should be captured during the scrum sprints provided the proper stakeholders are involved - which is where most IT organizations that continue to use waterfall or have improperly implemented agile scrum fall way short - which is my view from the cheap seats as to where Wyndham falls short, at least based upon my external observations.


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[HitchHiker71]

I wonder. Does “Wyndham” benefit from owners not being able to book rooms? Where does the money go when they rent non-owner occupied rooms? A coupe months ago I noticed a tag at the bottom of the old website saying “This advertising material is being used for the purpose of soliciting the sale of time-share property or interest in time-share property” Is there a way to get to having an owner website and not a seller one?
Wyndham has a good product. If they would end their high price, high rewards sells tactics they could sell their time shares easily and not have to “hard sell” 100 people to make one sell. Oh well, at least we’ll have an excuses to bypass the “owner update” for awhile again.

Wyndham can rent any inventory that they own directly, obtain via third party resales, obtain from owners via Extra Holidays, or via Ovations. IIRC they can also rent any remaining inventory that isn’t booked within the 30 day window. They rent primarily through Extra Holidays but also have other rental avenues.

AFAIK the owner login is only accessible to actual owners. There’s probably generic statements like you are referencing that apply to the entire website - not specifically to the owner site.

Skip the updates - they aren’t worth the time and aggravation as a general rule. The only reason I attend the updates on occasion is to obtain WR points for hotel travel and to get firsthand experiences on the sales tactics used since I’m a moderator on some of the Wyndham Facebook forums and want to give firsthand accounts of my experiences to others looking for advice on how to manage their interactions when attending updates.


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[chapjim]

I haven't tried the search functions yet -- don't have enough points to book anything.

FWIW, I have never made a reservation on my phone. Always on a laptop (desktop equivalent).

 

[MaryBella7]

I finally was able to get on. Both on desktop and mobile. Everything I normally do now require multiple clicks including just logging in. After logging in, why do we have to dedicate prime space to requesting information about ownership. I’m an owner logged in, why is this necessary? The absence of the availability calendar and floor plans are real downgrades. Performing a search for a resort on my phone brought me to my own dashboard of upcoming reservations. It’s really glitchy. I’m a tech girl. I do not fear change. I do hate changes that don’t improve function. This is like an advertisement first, function as an afterthought.

 

[bnoble]

I was able to log in via my iPad, and search for a few things. Seemed fine to me, but I wasn't doing anything complicated.

 

[Cyrus24]

Whether a user is 'mature' or not 'mature', uses a laptop or a smartphone, tech savvy or not tech savvy, those issues are immaterial. The Availability Calendar worked on both the phone and on the laptop. Now, it does not. They have stripped away a VERY useful tool and replaced it with something that requires a LOT of clicking. The -3/+3 day results are a nice gesture when looking for a specific date, I suspect that works for low volume/low point owners with limited vacation time. But, what about those of us with lots of flexibility in planning and lots of points that are able to look at several weeks in a month and several different length of stay options. I've said this before and I'll say it again, they have really made planning harder, not easier, whether you use the phone or the laptop, whether you are young or old. This is NOT about change, it's about functionality. I'd say most on the facebook groups are complaining about the same thing, no availability calendar. Are they the younger, tech savvy, smartphone users? If so, they don't like the loss of functionality any more that us more mature users.

And, then of course, not letting us look at just a specific resort, that is absurd, as well.

 

[kaljor]

It's the difference between "Search" and Browse". Many of us have a time frame in mind, but no particular week we need and no one particular resort in mind. Browsing lets us see many different options at a glance. Often for me, my first choice will influence my second choice, such as maybe booking 2 successive weeks in a particular area that I can drive to. Example, a week at Bonnet Creek followed by a week at Daytona or Panama City Beach. To make that work you have to know exactly which dates and room sizes are open at a random time.

The prior site allowed one to make a booking using either search or browse method, and I thought they worked equally well on laptop, desktop or mobile. The new one only lets you search.

Also, even though I can do things on a phone or tablet, as I get older I much prefer to do the final transaction on a bigger screen. Easier to see to make sure I'm not not accidentally clicking something wrong.

 

[dgalati]

I do not believe most active Wyndam TUG members are representative of the vast majority of timeshare owners. TUG is generally a more “mature” crowd IME. Wyndham is trying to modernize their overall IT strategy by moving toward a cloud first mobile first design approach. It’s obvious to me as someone who works for an IT cloud solutions provider.

For example, I don’t even own a desktop and haven’t in over ten years now. I have a business laptop that I use in a home office connected to three 27” external monitors via a USB-C docking station. So I do use the website on my laptop occasionally. I make 90% of my reservations via my smartphone and access 80% of all Wyndham website data via my smartphone. I also have tablets (6th gen iPad and iPad mini) but don’t use them much for Wyndham website access. Same with TUG - I almost always surf the TUG forums and post new content via my smartphone using the Tapatalk app - just like I’m doing right now for this reply.

That said, I’m not very impressed initially with the flow of the new website and some of the content displayed. It does clearly work better on my smartphone though - because it’s clear to me it was designed with this intent.


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I find it much easier to use my phone or mobile apps compared to a laptop. I also have not owned a desk top computer for almost 10 years. Its clear to me the new upgrade is as you stated not aimed at the more mature (older) TUG crowd. The push to mobile is a attempt to capture the next generation of owners and their dollars. Sorry to say but mobile is the way all business is being done today. Embrace change and think about how hard life would be without the mobile tools available for are use today.

 

[Cyrus24]

I find it much easier to use my phone or mobile apps compared to a laptop. I also have not owned a desk top computer for almost 10 years. Its clear to me the new upgrade is as you stated not aimed at the more mature (older) TUG crowd. The push to mobile is a attempt to capture the next generation of owners and their dollars. Sorry to say but mobile is the way all business is being done today. Embrace change and think about how hard life would be without the mobile tools available for are use today.

Again, they took away functionality that worked on both the laptop and the smartphone. This is not an AGE issue. This is a LOSS OF FUNCTIONALITY issue.

 

[55plus]

It's now easier to book a reservation on Wyndham Extra Holidays website than on the new and not so improved Wyndham Vacation Resorts website. Why does Extra Holidays have a calendar and now Wyndham's owners new website doesn't? We, as owners paid for that price of crap website. Is this by design? Is it now, screw the owners and full speed ahead with the bottom-line?

 

[bweltsch]

Main complaints:
1. Availability calendar---I often want to know a span of time resorts are available. If I want to go to the Carribean in February, let me see what is available and when without searching each resort individually week by week.
2. Lack of floor plans--is 4 occupancy two double beds or 2 bedrooms? 4(2) is not always what you expect
3. Lots of clicking to get anywhere. Also have to log in sometimes after already being logged in.
4. Resort search is very hinky. Sometimes brings up what you search for, sometimes 100's of miles away. Why can they not bring up a list of resorts in an area? Just entered Florida in "location" and it only brought up resorts in Orlando and Kissimee. I know there are other places in Florida. Shouldn't have to search resort by resort to find a place to vacation.
5. Search this area function on map does not work. come sup with 0 resorts found.

I almost always use my laptop or tablet for reservations. If there are photos of the resort I want to be able to see them.

 

[jhoug]

No one has answered the WorldMark question yet, but being an owner of both systems, I can tell you WorldMark locations book up a lot quicker—-months in advance—compared to Wyndham. So when it says call that number there is like no availability, not to mention the Club Pass Exchange fees.
For example, was try to look up Wyndham Park City availability ONLY and it also gave me the Worlmark Park City and WorldMark Wolf Creek 2 hrs away to call, not to mention others that I know have little available

 

[Cyrus24]

No one has answered the WorldMark question yet, but being an owner of both systems, I can tell you WorldMark locations book up a lot quicker—-months in advance—compared to Wyndham. So when it says call that number there is like no availability, not to mention the Club Pass Exchange fees.
For example, was try to look up Wyndham Park City availability ONLY and it also gave me the Worlmark Park City and WorldMark Wolf Creek 2 hrs away to call, not to mention others that I know have little available

I'll call on Monday if I don't get a good answer. I also suspect that the availability does not really exist. They add it in so that we have more to scroll past. I hope I'm wrong on my suspicion. Now, if it truly is there, I'll drop my complaints on the loss of the availability calendar.

 

[Sandi Bo]

I finally was able to get on. Both on desktop and mobile. Everything I normally do now require multiple clicks including just logging in. After logging in, why do we have to dedicate prime space to requesting information about ownership. I’m an owner logged in, why is this necessary? The absence of the availability calendar and floor plans are real downgrades. Performing a search for a resort on my phone brought me to my own dashboard of upcoming reservations. It’s really glitchy. I’m a tech girl. I do not fear change. I do hate changes that don’t improve function. This is like an advertisement first, function as an afterthought.

Only they forgot to advertise it!

Any tips on how to login? I called and the VC helped me register with a new login. We never could get the old one to work. Best we got was that message that something unexpected happened. And I have an email address on my account that isn't mine.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Whether a user is 'mature' or not 'mature', uses a laptop or a smartphone, tech savvy or not tech savvy, those issues are immaterial. The Availability Calendar worked on both the phone and on the laptop. Now, it does not. They have stripped away a VERY useful tool and replaced it with something that requires a LOT of clicking. The -3/+3 day results are a nice gesture when looking for a specific date, I suspect that works for low volume/low point owners with limited vacation time. But, what about those of us with lots of flexibility in planning and lots of points that are able to look at several weeks in a month and several different length of stay options. I've said this before and I'll say it again, they have really made planning harder, not easier, whether you use the phone or the laptop, whether you are young or old. This is NOT about change, it's about functionality. I'd say most on the facebook groups are complaining about the same thing, no availability calendar. Are they the younger, tech savvy, smartphone users? If so, they don't like the loss of functionality any more that us more mature users.

And, then of course, not letting us look at just a specific resort, that is absurd, as well.

They are not immaterial I can promise you that - the new site is obviously built with the mobile device user experience foremost in mind - and therefore it is NOT for desktop consumption which is what many more mature folks tend to still use for various legitimate and good reasons. The difference will be that whatever functionality is implemented and added will be designed primarily for smartphones from this point forward - anyone who wants functions that are primarily desktop browser focused is going to have to adapt to the new world is all I am saying. As Dominic said - the newer site is purposefully catering to the younger generations - they are the potential customers Wyndham is targeting in the future.

Specific to your reference about missing functions, that is why in my last paragraph I explicitly stated that despite the move toward a cloud first mobile first design approach - I’m not impressed with the new mobile UX to date - because it is missing some key functions - like the “browse” function that someone else mentioned.

The Voyager site never worked particularly well with smartphones IME. I experienced a ton of UX inconsistencies when consuming content on my smartphone over the past two years. Particularly with the search and browse functions. Buttons would often not be located in the proper positions or would overlap other data on the screens or be hidden behind other content. Sometimes the buttons just plain would not work even with repeated clicks.

While I completely agree that there is missing functionality - to date what is there - works much better on my smartphone than the previous website. It’s obvious to me that the new site was built for smartphone consumption from the outset.


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[HitchHiker71]

I finally was able to get on. Both on desktop and mobile. Everything I normally do now require multiple clicks including just logging in. After logging in, why do we have to dedicate prime space to requesting information about ownership. I’m an owner logged in, why is this necessary? The absence of the availability calendar and floor plans are real downgrades. Performing a search for a resort on my phone brought me to my own dashboard of upcoming reservations. It’s really glitchy. I’m a tech girl. I do not fear change. I do hate changes that don’t improve function. This is like an advertisement first, function as an afterthought.

I think they may be trying to combine the disparate websites into a single UX. I noticed the following on the new site:

Both “owner travel deals” and “non-owner travel deals” are listed under the Deals section. Pure speculation on my part to be clear. The non-owner deals are basically the party weekends from what I see.

I also saw the pop-up that some have mentioned about the June 30 date for any reservations. Meanwhile the owner based COVID-19 section says June 15. I think the difference in the dates is for owners vs non-owners.

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[55plus]

Wyndham Extra Holidays displays a calendar on my smart phone. There is no reason why Wyndham can't do the same with the owners website.

 

[dgalati]

Again, they took away functionality that worked on both the laptop and the smartphone. This is not an AGE issue. This is a LOSS OF FUNCTIONALITY issue.

Why are so many happy Wyndham TUG owners unhappy? The younger generation embrace these changes and don't post or are not active on TUG.

 

[55plus]

Why are so many happy Wyndham TUG owners unhappy? The younger generation embrace these changes and don't post or are not active on TUG.

Age has nothing to do with it. Young or old, the changes hinder its use. Who thinks more clicks to accomplish what use to be accomplished with one or two clicks is better Who considers no calendar a plus?

 

[kaljor]

I agree. I just looked at the phone site and it's really similar to the laptop/desktop site. It's minimally easier to use because if you want a date 9 months in the future you can just scroll down the calendar to get to the month you want instead of clicking the right arrow 9 times. And I do understand that they wanted to combine the two interfaces to be similar, and that does mean catering to the mobile site.

So I don't see any conflict between the two. I really don't care about any of the changes except the loss of the calendar or browse view, and that's missing from both. I can adapt to anything else, so if Wyndham restores that functionality I won't complain about anything else. I may mention little things from time to time, but it's not a complaint!!

 

[dgalati]

Age has nothing to do with it. Young or old, the changes hinder its use. Who thinks more clicks to accomplish what use to be accomplished with one or two clicks is better Who considers no calendar a plus?

The point is the changes are intended for the next generation. Next gen is who Wyndham will be selling ownership to.

 

[cbyrne1174]

I'm 30 and not having floorplans or a calendar is stupid. They completely got rid of the 1 thing that would make a retail purchase worth it to someone my age: picking up the short stay local remaining inventory. I live near Clearwater, Orlando, Pompano, and Daytona and I can't see the remaining 1 to 2 night inventory anymore. For example if I were to PIC to Gold, I would save 17,500 on a Saturday night stay at Clearwater in a 1 bedroom and not have to worry about reservation transactions or housekeeping credits. With cheap PICs, this makes Saturday nights only $150 a night vs $300 a night using my normal MF and a $19 reservation transaction.

Good thing my generation knows how to google better. The only way the company is going to be able to sell to my generation is by making retail purchases mathematically worth it.