In simplest terms, 1 RT (reservation transaction fee) is due for every reservation you make as well as some other transactions you make through the program. For the purposes of this post, let’s just leave it there. The fee is $19 per RT. When you own, you are given 1 free RT each year for every 77,000 points you own. In real life, if you can plan your desired vacations early enough, you will likely have enough free RT’s. If you change your mind a lot, and cancel reservations a lot, you will incur this charge on every new reservation you make. Not on cancellations, though. My first year I burned through about 4 extra RT’s. First I booked a 4 night stay in a 1 Bedroom Deluxe. Then I decided I wanted an extra night. Well in Wyndham you cannot just add or subtract a night, you have to cancel the rez, and make a new one. And then after that, I found an additional rez I wanted, but I needed a few more points, so I cancelled the Deluxe and booked a Suite. Boom—Another RT!. Just a small real world example of how things work.
Housekeeping Fee credits work like this: You get 1 HF for each 1000 points each year. If you use them all up and still have enough points to book another reservation, you will have to buy enough to cover that stay. In real life, if you use your points to book full week or almost full week vacations, you will probably not ever have to buy any additional. Additional HF’s are usually triggered by using your points for multiple stays of less than a full week.
The reason short stays will waste your HF’s is because you need the same amount of them for a 7 night stay or a 1 night stay. You need the same amount for a 14 night stay as for an 8 night stay. And you need more for a 2 bedroom than a 1 bedroom. And more for a 3 or 4 etc.
After a year or maybe 2 of using the system, you learn common sense ways to avoid wasting money on excess RT’s and HF’s. The issue is that you want to make your reservations as early as possible to get the best availability, but sometimes after that things come up that make you change your dates. If it happens a lot, you may have some of these extra fees, but honestly, over the course of my first two years of ownership, I don’t think I spent more than $150 for all the excess costs. In my third year, I have made all my bookings, and I don’t expect to have any additional costs.
One year, after making all the reservations I wanted, I ended up with some points left over near the end of the year, and I chose to make a reservation to use up the remaining points, and that incurred an additional RT and some additional HF’s, but it was small enough that really, who cares? An extra vacation is well worth it.
tl:dr If you use your points for full weeks or almost full weeks, and you don’t alter your reservations excessively, these fees are a non issue.
