Frequent Miler on the Air - Is Wyndham a legit first tier hotel program? | Ep98 | 5-15-21

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

00:43 Giant Mailbag: Wyndham is great! No, Wyndham stinks! Or maybe it's all the same feedback.... 5:28 What crazy thing....did Days Inn do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/days-inn-offering-10k-to-atay-at-the-best-days-inn-properties-write-about-it/ 10:22 What crazy thing did....Wyndham Rewards do this week? 14:57 Mattress Running the Numbers: Best Western offers 5K per night for 1-3 nights. Is it worth it? https://frequentmiler.com/best-western-earn-5k-points-per-night-for-3-nights-or-20-gift-card-per-night-for-5-nights-then-5k-points-per-5-nights/ 20:48 Main Event: Is Wyndham a legit first-tier program? https://frequentmiler.com/which-hotel-loyalty-program-is-most-rewarding-on-paid-stays/ https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-wyndham-points-worth/ Credit cards: https://frequentmiler.com/WyndhamEarnerBiz/#Goto https://frequentmiler.com/WyndhamEarnerPlus/#Goto https://frequentmiler.com/WyndhamEarner/#Goto 42:30 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/gregs-wrong-the-choice-privileges-visa-is-totally-worth-a-look-right-now/ 46:12 Question of the Week: Is the Hyatt or Hilton card better for hotel spend? https://frequentmiler.com/ask-us-anything/#comment-2318621 https://frequentmiler.com/the-under-valued-hilton-surpass-card-why-this-offer-is-better-than-it-looks/ Don't forget to like, subscribe, and enable notifications. Join our email list at: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event is windham a legit first tier hotel program good question good question things are changing the times they are changing greg things are changing i can't even believe we're asking this question i mean a year ago nobody would have asked that it would have been the shortest show ever what crazy thing did greg and nick do this week they suggested that maybe windham was worth thinking about right that's probably what it would have been but yeah no today we're gonna talk about it are they legit yeah there's a lot of good things happening on the windham side so okay let's uh drag out the giant mailbag first. And today I have it digitally because I'm not set up with a printer. Two pieces of feedback came from my post on the value of Wyndham Points,

where I redid the point valuations. And first, Pam says, Wyndham is a distinct two-tiered company unlike any of the other major brands I know you're considering Wyndham as a whole which is fair but I doubt I'll ever use my Wyndham rewards on a travel lodge or super 8 Wyndham grand dulce trademark collection and timeshare resorts consistently earned well over uh one cent per point i think she meant redeemed for for better than that i am top tier with hyatt hilton and marriott but windham gives me the best bang for my buck all right and then wait there's more

okay there's more all right read a little bit from stever stvr who said among other things i truly don't associate windndham with Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Seattle. Now that was the collection of cities I looked in to do the point valuations. That isn't really their strength. If I were in any of those metro areas, Wyndham would be an unlikely choice. I know I've tried in Los Angeles and Miami and not found anything suitable. I associate Wyemore with metro areas where the only competition is limited service. because people are going to use the programs in different ways. And so, you know, Steve may be happy to use his points at a, you know, travel lodge along the side of the highway, wherever it might be to save money on a free night overnight somewhere. And Pam might want to only stay at the top end Wyndham properties, wherever those may be. And then, you know,

of course, we also are going to have to talk about the Casa and some of the other ways to get good points out of our good value out of Wyndham points. So a lot of different options. I think there might be more in common between Stever and Pam than is obvious. Okay. Or at least maybe I'm reading into it, but I looked up after reading Pam's note, I looked up a couple of these brands like Dulce and Trademark Collection that I didn't really know anything about. And to be honest, I still don't know much about them, but it was interesting looking at their locations because these are higher end brands within Wyndham's collection of brands.

And I was surprised to find things like Dulce and Trademark Collection in markets where you don't normally see many top-end chain hotels. And so I found one in Northern Michigan, and I had no idea there was anything Wyndham-related other than things like Super 8s or whatever in northern michigan so uh finding out about that is it's very interesting and and you know it kind of like the vacasa vacation rental thing uh windham might be you know a more interesting chain or you know program than we were kind of aware of before because it does seem to have more going on in places where there's maybe less competition. Yeah. You know, that's a good point too, because I think I have stated a couple of trademark collection properties over the years, long, long ago at this point. So

that's why I only kind of vaguely remember. But I do remember like my image of trademark collection is that sort of like, I don't know if rural is the right word, but more like a mountain destination somewhere that's like kind of far away from everything. And so, yeah, perfect example of a there aren't a lot of other competitors, near national parks and in the Midwest or the Western range of the United States, in the kind of more open plains-y type places. So yeah, I mean, I think Wyndham has a reach that, well, we're going to talk more about, but I think that it's intriguing. It's interesting. And certainly they could both appeal to different or similar sets of travelers. And they, like you said, have more, more in common than meets the eye. So.

Right. Right. And then of course for those who are comfortable with a sort of lower end super eights and stuff and days in, they have, they have plenty of that sort of thing. Yeah. And of course that was my poor attempt of, of creating a transition. Right into what crazy thing did Days In do this week? What did they do?

Something about paying someone to take some pictures, right? What's going on there? That's right. They're looking for someone who has the skills that they need to make Days In look attractive. They are willing to pay somebody $10,000, $10,000 to travel for two weeks to the finest Days In properties, coast to coast. And they're going to give that person also a $250 a day stipend, travel stipend,

be able to do stuff and whatnot and clean their camera from wherever it's been at the days in and make sure that they get some good, nice spiffy shots to throw on Instagram and other social media platforms. I assume Instagram, they say social media. And so what they're looking for you to do, it seems they are primarily looking for somebody with photography skills. The advertisement for this internship, they call it a sunternship, seems to very much focus on the ability to take good photos, which should not be shocking to anybody who's familiar with Days End, that they are more interested in your ability to photograph things well than to write about them. So all they want is for you to go out there to, not all they want, maybe they want you to write something, but they'd

like you to take some nice pictures, do some fun stuff and create a hot list of days in properties. And you get to pick the itinerary. You just have to write a 300 word essay about, you know, why they should pick you kind of a thing and what your dream itinerary would be for two weeks. And they're going to pay somebody a lot of money to go out there and travel the United States. So what do you think? What do you think about this, Greg? You know, I think it actually sounds like a ton of fun. I mean, that's the kind of thing that just about anyone, if you're good at taking pictures, I would think it would be, it would be so much fun to go out and, and be creative and try to figure out how do I get this days in and a good light and make it actually look like a place people would want to go.

I mean, that was my thought. They say you're going to get a glowing recommendation from, you know, days in executive when you get done. And I was thinking for sure, because if you make it look good, they know you're good. And I mean, talk about something to toss on the resume. I made days in look good for two weeks. Right. Right. That doesn't get you an interview. I don't know what's gonna. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I imagine that at each get you an interview i don't know what's gonna yeah yeah and you know i imagine that the at each hotel you stop at they probably will know who you are and will probably roll out all the stops to wine and dine you all the yes all the bags of chips and yeah you can eat uh well and your accommodations are covered also. I didn't mention that, but of course the

hotel stay is covered and at 250 bucks a day, that's what, like 10 days, it'd be 250. So you get a few more days and how many, I mean, or 2,500 rather, uh, or 3000 ish. So 3000 bucks on top of the 10,000, it's really, it's like a $13,000, you know, net win, so to speak for you to spend two, well, should we call it a net win? You got to spend two days. Right, right. So there is that downside. Yeah, that downside. Yeah. But but kind of crazy, kind of crazy. And somebody out there is going to have a blast, I imagine, because, you know, it's fun to kind of laugh and be like, oh, I wouldn't want to stay days in for two weeks necessarily. But I think the challenge in finding whatever the finest Days Inns

coast to coast might be and making them look good, that actually does sound kind of fun. We should do a competing contest, which is like whoever wins this Days Inn thing, we'll pay them,

I don't know, make up an amount, but to take pictures of the Hyatt places that they actually stay in each night. Because goodness knows they're putting that $250 a day stipend to use to stay somewhere else, anywhere else. No, we joke. I mean, when's the last time you've stayed at Days Inn? It's been so long for me.

I mean, maybe they're nice, I don't know. It's been a few years. I did stay at one. Unfortunately, I'd used some of my points before Wyndham ran their last crazy deal several years back. I'd used some points at a Days Inn in Utica, New York. And it was as nice as we're insinuating a Days Inn debate.

But I definitely stayed at Days Inns years ago more often. And I'm sure I stayed at some that were just fine. So I'm sure I stated some that were just fine so I'm sure there are some of those some of all types so yes I'll be interested to see I'll be like I really have an interest in seeing how it turns out for whoever it is that does it I really want to see the pictures because I mean they're gonna have to obviously try to make it look good so I'm curious I want I want to know, is Wyndham a legit top-tier property, or excuse me, chain rather, and have I just been missing the boat on DayZen?

Right, right. Okay. But today we have a double header. We do. We have another crazy thing. What crazy thing did Wyndham Rewards do? Wyndham Rewards is making it right back in. Right back in. Look crazy thing did Wyndham Rewards do? Wyndham Rewards is making it right back in. Right back in.

Look at you, Wyndham. It's like a Wyndham, Wyndham, Wyndham day. I mean, we had Wyndham in the reader feedback, doubleheader Wyndham craziness. It's all Wyndham all the time. This is the Wyndham channel. And they are not paying us $10,000. Let's be clear.

No, they'll probably debit us somehow for airing the show. Take some points away from us. Lawyers will send us some cease and desist letters. So what crazy thing? I mean, there's something going on with the credit card here. And you got to tell us what's going on. Because you did all this research about point values and blah, blah, blah. And what craziness did you find? Okay. So, so this is just too weird. You know how they're the new Wyndham earner credit cards. One

of the benefits that I love is that they automatically give you 10% discount on award nights. That's terrific. That's awesome. It's not a rebate. You don't have to have the points up front. It's just a discount. That's right. Right. It's way better than a rebate. Another perk that they list is, I think it says something like up to 12% off on paid nights.

And so it sounds like it could be a good discount. And in some cases, it's a legitimate discount, if not a really good one. I'm always skeptical of the up to, makes me a little skeptical. Yeah. Well, and you have right to be because Steven Pepper has written before that it actually varies from like 4% to 12%. And it's a discount off the best available rate. All right, so that's all fine. And you expect when you're searching for paid rates for the amount of discount to vary, all good and fine. But Wyndham also has their member rate, which is a discount off the best available rate. And I ran into situations where the member rate was cheaper than the credit card discounted rate. What? What? Now it gets worse. So when I was

logged in as myself, I had no way to get that cheaper member rate because it would only show me the Wyndham earner rate, which is the credit card rate. The only reason. As though you're not a member, right? As though you're not a member. Yeah. I'm not eligible for the member rate because I have the credit card. I had to log in as my wife to see the member rate, which was lower. And then here's the dilemma is, of course, if you have the earner card, you have diamond status.

You want the reservation to be in your name. You don't want to book it in someone else's account. Yet, if you want that rate, you if you want the cheap rate, it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you. Those diamond benefits are not cheap to administer, Greg. OK, yeah, there you go. There's a couple of bottles of water in are not cheap to administer, Greg. Okay. Yeah. There you go.

There's a couple of bottles of water in it for you. Water, yeah. Maybe. Maybe you get a bag of chips if you go to Days of Who Knows. Maybe. It's possible. Yeah, I don't know. That's crazy.

That's insane. So you're a member. You have to be a member in order to have the credit card, right? I mean, obviously, you have a membership number. So one would think that if you have the credit card, that you would certainly be eligible to book the member rate. But apparently not. You would think so. And usually the credit card rate was like a little bit less than the member rate,

but we're at least equal to it. But yeah, it's just not the best perk of the card. It's almost an anti-perk. That doesn't make any sense at all. But I will say that there's no reason your wife shouldn't have Wyndham Diamond status because I'm sure that she hopped on the status match go round back in the day when we wrote about that and is matching back and forth between Caesar's Diamond and Wyndham Diamond as we speak, right? No, she did. She did not. She, you know, she doesn't, she doesn't read this stuff. So much for that. So, uh, so no, no bottles of water for you, Greg. Sorry.

Sorry to not, if we booked that, that rate, but, um, I don't know, maybe she'll sign up for the wind them earner business card as well. Like I did. So that way she can't have access to those good rates anymore either. Then you don't have to know what you're missing. That's right. And she can be just as diamond as me. That is fantastic. All right. So craziness, craziness, and more craziness from Wyndham this week. Let's move from Wyndham to everybody else's favorite hotel chain. When we do it, it's mattress running the numbers to talk about the latest best Western promotion. Tell us about it, Craig. What's going on? Yeah. Best Western. We really should have done a Wyndham promotion just to keep it all consistent. But no, Best Western, as Steven Pepper wrote in his post about this latest promo, is finally out with a legitimately good promotion. Now, you can choose between a bad promotion or a

good promotion. So, I have a good one, but you have to choose the good one, right? You have to choose the good one. So, I suggest when you register, you register for the good one, which, you also get 5,000 points with night which is pretty good but having to stay in multiples of five nights to maximize it isn't isn't great however i don't know i mean i think five thousand points per night that's that would be a good promotion in anyone's book i mean if well i think it's four thousand per night right because it's five nights you end up with twenty thousand points so you get four thousand i'm sorry the the first three nights if you only stay three oh first three nights you need five thousand

that's true that's true well you know maybe but i'm not actually sure that this is better than the twenty dollar gift card promotion and you know why i'm not sure? Because FrequentMiler hasn't yet done the what are best Western points worth post. So I have no idea what these best Western points are worth. I mean, do you know anything about that? That's a good point. FrequentMiler, at the time we're recording this, has not yet published a post on it, but he has done the analysis and it came out a little over half a cent a point. I can't remember the exact number, but I think it was 0.54 or something like that. Well, now you've got my

interest. Now you're talking about like 25 bucks a night back, right? Right. So, and they don't expire unlike those, those so-called gift cards. Wow. So if you stay, if you stay five nights, you end up with more than a hundred dollars back. And if you just stay in three night chunks, then you do a little bit better. Is it just the first three nights you get 5,000 per night or everything? Yeah. Just the first, just the first three. So, you know, I think if you're going to think about mattress running this, it's one to three nights to do it. Cause you know know as you sort of pointed out going for that five night threshold actually reduces your average return on on your on your night so if it's just a pure mattress run where you're doing it for the points then yeah you should do that you should only do

one to three nights is it worth it though so let's just talk about one night. Cause it's, it's equal whether you do one night or three nights. So one night, 5,000 points worth, uh, 25, 30 ish dollars over $25. Let's call it 30 to be generous, generous, generous to best Western today. Uh, okay. Well, that's where my generosity for best Western starts and ends. So no, I don't think it's probably worth mattress running for that. But if you need a stay, that's a good return on a stay, though. Right. Yeah, it's it's it's good enough that it's that it's if you are totally agnostic, I think, between, you know, staying at a Best Western or a Wyndham or an IHG or whatever, you know, it's a pretty good return.

And so if you totally didn't care, that would make sense. Or good enough that if you've got a $250 a day stipend and you're stuck at the day zone, you might, might opt for the best Western. I don't know. I'm just saying, go ahead. One one of the things that that i found really surprising when looking at the best western numbers the the how much value you get from their points is that it doesn't change much when i look at the 60th percentile 70th 80th 90th, the point values are all clumping around that 0.5 to 0.6 range. So unlike most other programs where if you cherry pick the best awards, you can do really, really well. That's much harder to do here. I didn't see many opportunities to get far outsized value value. So I say no. My vote is no to this as a mattress run. I'm going to readjust, probably no to a mattress run, but I'm going to add something

anyway. For those of you who are out there who are like, well, you know, there is a Best Western I could stay at. I checked while we were talking about this and at the time of recording, which I think will still be the same at the time of publication, Rakuten is offering 15% back on Bass Western, which is alternatively 15 membership rewards points per dollar if you're earning membership rewards points. So that's a nice return. If you stack that along with the points promo, I mean, again, you're not going to mattress run it probably, but that starts to get pretty darn good. I mean, if you got $100 a night and you're getting 25 back from the promo or 30 back, we said, from the promo, and then even 15 back from Rakuten

if you're taking his cash back instead of points, that's almost half your stay back. Right. Not bad. Not bad, Best Western. It's a legitimately good promotion. There you go, Best Western. Okay. So speaking of legitimately good, that takes us, I believe, to the main event. meaning it's good to have the points in case something comes up where you can use them, but there's no way I would concentrate a lot of my, if I'm doing cash stays on Wyndham in order to get more elite status or earn more points or both. I think of Marriott and H, as the maybe IHG as, as the, you know, sort of

first tier programs, they've got hotels everywhere. They've got, you know, every range, whether you want cheaper or more expensive and, and at least with Hilton and Marriott, they have reasonable elite programs. So you can get, you can get a lot of benefits. Wyndham, though, as we've seen this week, they not only are the points worth more than we kind of thought before, but earnings on paid stays are also very good, especially if you get that Wyndham earner business card, because then you've got diamond status. So having top tier status gives you more points per dollar for your paid stays. And the Wyndham earner business card gives you eight points per dollar at Wyndham. So that combination gives you a lot of points per dollar. As we said earlier,

the points are worth more. The combination means that you're doing really well compared to most other brands, most other chains by concentrating your paid stays at Wyndham. And then the question is like, do we care? It's kind of how I feel about IHG, right? I mean, IHG, decent return on spend in terms of the number of points, but that's it, right? Very good return on hotel spend with the IHG Premier Card because it gives 10 points per dollar and platinum status. So you get extra points there. Yeah, IHG, you have good return on spend in the hotels, but you're like, well, what am I going to do with those points? It's not that great of a program.

Is Wyndham different? Are they at a point where we can legitimately get excited about earning more Wyndham points than Marriott or Hilton and everything like that. You know, I think it's interesting because Wyndham is, I think they are legitimately different than other hotel programs. I have to agree with Pam on that in the sense that they have a very eclectic collection because they have some very kind of what I'm going to call low-end brands. And I feel like that mischaracterizes it because I'm sure that some of those low end brands are nice. And I don't mean to say low end, like

not good quality, but I mean like super eight type places, some super eights are fine and some are not so fine, but they have some very inexpensive type of brands, but then they also have brands that are, you know, certainly average to higher than average price. There's even some all-inclusives in the Caribbean. And then now, of course, we have the Vacasa Vacation Rentals, which is huge. And of course, there's also the timeshare properties. And there are even some decent properties that are sort of like independently

and they're in the middle somewhere. I know that we talked the other day about that one in Sedona that someone had brought up in a comment. And then a reader reached out to me and sent me a message and said they booked it and they were super excited because the cash rates were really high and it was 15,000 points per night. And it looks like a boutique type of a property in Sedona. I don't know. I haven't been there, but they have

an interesting mix of properties that I think that makes it kind of more intriguing than IHG because IHG, it's, you know, really kind of cookie cutter type stuff for the most part, apart from Kempton and Intercontinental, really most of the other hotels are kind of a more of a, they fit that cookie cutter sort of image of whatever the brand is. Whereas I feel like Wyndham, like maybe they are cookie cutter. I just don't know that cookie cutter set, you know, like I've never, I've never made cookies with that set. So maybe that's what it is that it's kind of intriguing to me because it's different. But I mean, I think that there is a lot of potential.

And I think the particularly exciting thing for people listening to this show, reading Frequent Miler, et cetera, is that the credit card, the business credit card gives you an amazing opportunity to manufacture nights from spend. And I think that that is a key differentiator that makes them now closer to a top tier. Even if their properties aren't all luxurious, there are some that look certainly reasonably luxurious and nice, and there's a really easy way to get the points. There sure is, right? So you're getting 8x at gas stations with that business card. With the personal card, I think you get 4x, is it? Or 5x at grocery stores. So there's some opportunity there as well.

Yeah, that's another thing that I think sets it apart from IHG in a way because IHG, you know, with IHG's own credit cards, there aren't good ways of earning multiples like that outside of spending at the hotel itself. And then if you're spending on chase cards, that ultimate rewards cards that do transfer one-to-one IHG, that's a terrible use of your ultimate rewards points. You're much better off even just cashing out your points than transferring an IHG because of how little IHG points are worth compared to the pennies that you could get instead or to transferring to Hyatt, which would give you much, much more value.

And I think the award chart is also intriguing because, you know, like IHG, you've got a range all the way up to 70,000 points a night. Now, some of the six census places are 100,000 or whatever or more. Whereas Wyndham, it's three levels, 7,515,000 or 30,000. Now, somebody out there is saying, oh, but the condos are 15,000 points per bedroom and the vacasas 15,000 points per bed. That's true. But at the hotels, IHG will charge you up to 70,000 or now 100,000 or more at some hotels for a basic hotel room. Whereas Wyndham Wound is 30,000 as the cap for a regular hotel room or for one bedroom. That's as much as you're going to pay anywhere. So that's pretty intriguing because then you say, okay, so 30,000 is the top and 15,000 is next.

And there are some decent 15,000 point places. I was particularly impressed by the way, I'm going to derail myself for a second, but when you did the deval, or excuse me, when you did the evaluation of the value of Wyndham points, your median and mean point values were much lower than I expected. When you were picking the three top Wyndham properties based on TripAdvisor from each city, I thought for sure it was going to skew towards the 30,000 point properties and it didn't like 15,000, 16,000, something like that. I mean, those numbers, both the median and the mean came out right in there. That's true. That's true. Although sometimes the reviews, the properties that people like the best are the simple properties that are near the airport that are not that expensive and just do what they need to do. I've seen that when looking at Marriott as well.

You tend to see their middle to low-end chains getting the best reviews for whatever reason, not 100% of the time, but often. So I'm not sure what to make of that. But I will say, I mean, yes, 15,000 was by far the most likely cost within my data set. I didn't have a single 7,500 point property show up. Yeah, I saw that. That was interesting. But that's interesting to me for two reasons. Number one, because it tells us that that's really kind of a worthless tier

because there's probably not going to be any place you really want to stay at that price. But then it's also interesting. It tells me how many 15,000 point properties they must have for the average to have not gotten higher than that. There must be a bigger footprint in the 15,000 range than I would have expected.

So, and you make a point there that the places that are higher end people have higher expectations, so easier to fall short and end up with not as good reviews. So I don't know, maybe that skews it, but at 15,000 points per night for a lot of those places, if you're earning eight points per dollar, you're talking about $1,875 and spend on the credit card gets you a free night. I mean, $1,875 on anything else other than a Chase Inc. card for Hyatt. Other than that, you're not getting a free night somewhere for that much spend. Wyndham is it. That's the only game in town if you want to earn points for very low, relatively speaking, very low spend. And even the 30,000-point places that are higher end. Then you're talking, what, $3,750 low spend. And even the 30,000 point places that are higher end,

you know, then you're talking what, 37, 50. I mean, come on, you're not going to get a top tier for that with anybody else. And, you know, and if you're, if you're someone who, you know, tends to pay for your hotel stays, I found it really interesting that using their points to get a discount with what they call, I think it's go fast rewards, points are worth even more. So, you know, consistently getting like one cent and more value using it to get a discount, which, you know, I'm sort of like on two minds on that. One is like, wow, this is great. You get so much value. On the other hand, like, well, why can't I get my hotel entirely for free at that value? It's a little frustrating. Right, right. Well, yeah, that's true. And that is kind of frustrating. But at the same time,

I mean, I feel like they are offering a fair amount of value. I mean, that's like eight tenths of a cent per point is not bad. That's 0.82. That's pretty much on par with Marriott choice. Better than Marriott. Yeah. That's a pretty solid point value. I mean, it's only Hyatt that has a better value for hotel points. Am I wrong on that as far as a more highly valued hotel currency? Hyatt's it, right? I think that's right. And to earn eight of those per dollar at gas stations and then even at the grocery, like you said, the bonuses that are on the personal cards,

I mean, that's not bad at all. And then if you do value those points at the 0.82 cents each that you said, the credit card, the business card, am I right? It has a $75 annual fee? The business card, I think it's the personal card that has 75. The business card, I think, is 95. And it comes with 15,000 points per year, right? 15,000 points per year, yeah. So it easily pays for itself with the points and all the perks are great. Yeah.

So I know you have the card. Are you going to be booking Wyndham properties? I mean, I know we're kind of making it sound like Wyndham is the top tier, like Wyndham is the thing. We're excited about Wyndham. Are you really going to stay at a bunch of Wyndham properties?

Probably not yet. You know, I want to see them do more at the very high-end luxury level. I get excited about using Hyatt points to stay at a Park Hyatt or a Lila property. I want to see things like that. If Wyndham has anything at that level, I'm not aware of it. There might be, I don't know. So, you know, and it's not unreasonable to think that they might start building out at that level. Well, and I think that it's interesting for me. So I love those types of properties that you just talked about there, the park type of high-end chain properties. So that would be my hesitation with going all in and half my hesitation. My other half is that I enjoy my elite perks. I want breakfast and stuff like that or lounge access. And you're not going to get anything like that with Wyndham. And that's one of the things that turns me off about IHG. Even though there are some nice IHG properties out there, I'm kind of like, eh, they're not going to give me anything. What's in it for me to be loyal? Some extra points, I guess. I don't pay for enough paid stays to get super excited about that. But I do like to use credit cards and make some points up. So that's why Wyndham intrigues me a bit more now on top of

that, as someone now at the kind of beginning stages of family travel, and certainly in the time period that we're coming out of here, those vacation rental type properties are much more intriguing to me now than they ever were. So the Casa for sure. I mean, we've talked a lot about that. That's really intriguing. I can't wait. I would not hesitate to book one of those.

Yeah. I mean, I can't wait to see what my first experience with that works out to be like. And then also some of the timeshare properties that people have mentioned. I'm very curious to look into some of those and see how many one bedroom timeshare type properties I can find, because those would also be monster value at 15,000 points per bedroom per night. I mean, if I could be manufacturing nights in vacation rentals with a kitchen and, you know, a bedroom separate and all the rest of that, it's like getting my own suite upgrades, right? I mean, who needs suite upgrade awards if you can book the one bedroom right from the get go? You know,

it's not such a big deal anymore. So I'm really intrigued about that. And I was disappointed that you didn't find a way to kind of mix that into the reasonable redemption value. Now I understand why you didn't, but at the same time I look at it and I say, okay, so what we know so far about Vacasa is that your 15,000 points for a one bedroom, we're pretty confident that will buy you up to a $350 a night. So we're talking about more than two cents per point in value, potential value for a one bedroom. Now there's a range, so they're not all going to be that high. So that makes it a little difficult to account for, but that's a fantastic use. Somebody else pointed out the fact

that you could transfer points to Caesars. So if you're listening to me and you're like, Nick, stop talking about family travel. I don't care about that. I just want to go to Vegas. Well, great. They got you covered there, too, because you could transfer over to Caesars Rewards and get one cent per point towards rooms and food and all the rest of that kind of stuff shows whatever it is you want to pay for at Caesars. So points are easily worth one cent each for anybody interested in Vegas or Atlantic City or the other places where Caesars Rewards has properties. So I feel like between Vacasa and Caesars, there is something to be said for bumping that reasonable are a lot of opportunities to get more.

Not only, I loved how you included the percentiles, by the way, how you included 60th, 70th, 8th. Wish we'd do that on all of them. We should definitely add that data because I'm sure. Yeah, my plan is to go back. When I update each set from now on, I'll include the percentiles. And so, you know, my goal is to update them hopefully quarterly. I mean, I don't want to, you know, keep waiting years to do this, but now that I have a process to go through, it shouldn't be that hard to do that. Um, the percentiles. Yeah. So I think that that's how we

answer, um, that, that question of like, what should the RVb if if you know you're going to be using um your windham points for well if you know you're going to be using for caesars and just in your head just use one cent because that's what its values that right but if you know you're going to be using it for vacasa or other like high-end, then, you know, look towards the 80th, 90th percentile on that chart and just fix in your mind the numbers there as to what the window points are worth for you. I just don't feel comfortable. That's even still low. For Vacasa, that's even still low. I mean, it is. It is. Yeah. Not necessarily for Vacasa. So but that's even still towards the low end. So I guess that's where I look at it and I say, this is a really interesting program because look at all these different things we've talked about.

You can stay at a Super 8 for a reasonable number of points. You could stay at a potentially mid-tier type of a place. They have small inclusives. They've got the timeshares. They've got the vacation rentals. They have a wide range. That's a wider range than what you'll find with most hotel programs. I mean, we get excited about Hyatt having small luxury hotels in the world

because those do look pretty nice. But I think that what Wyndham is adding here with the vacation rental game and Caesars and everything else is just a different set of really cool things. So I think the argument can be made that they are a legit top-tier program. They're probably not the one i'm going to choose primarily right so what so the the two things they need from us like for us to to really put them up there with let's say hyatt you know which ones we really like is is uh they need to they need to up the game on the elite program i mean to be honest i don't even have in my head like what they

offer it for diamond status but just whatever it is it's not good enough because we would we would remember your water we would remember if they were if they were a good good purse um and uh and and they need to expand out their their higher end like luxury properties so you know by i i kind of wish it was them instead of ihg that had bought you know six senses and the uh the other camera what it is but i had recently bought bought another mr and mrs smith that's it mr mrs smith you know if wyndham had done that i'd be much more excited about those because we'd probably be looking at 30,000 points per night instead of IHG. As you said earlier, you were like 100,000, 200,000. It's whatever it is.

Right, right, right. Well, and I don't know. Maybe I'm glad that they didn't buy those things because maybe they would be pushed in that direction if they had bought those things. I'm less and less committed to the fact that I need more luxury properties. It sounds like they have some decent, I don't know if luxury is the right word, but decent, comfortable type of properties where I feel like I could probably be reasonably happy. And I'm not going to only have Wyndham Points. I'm going to have some other points. So I feel like I could make them my primary program for a few years at the stage of life

I'm at. I think if I were at Greg's stage of life, I would be much more hesitant and I would be demanding the luxury properties like he is. That actually makes a lot of sense. I think for a family with young kids, Wyndham's probably has a really good collection. I think right now, I think probably, I don't know. I gotta do some more research. I'm intrigued like you are. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Pop quiz time. What are, what are the hotel chains, hotel loyalty programs that do not charge, uh, resort fees on award stays. All right. So Hyatt does not charge a resort fee on award stays.

Hilton does not charge a resort fee on award stays. Marriott, we know, does. IHG, it's hotel dependent, I believe, because I know some do. So I don't think IHG is just not one of the ones that doesn't was your question I mean they do charge Wyndham I know they advertise that there's no fees but I saw that a reader commented and said that they booked like a go free and it said no fees but then

like a week later they changed like the reservation got changed and fees got added I don't know about Wyndham do you so yeah I can't speak to that one reader complaint, but when I was doing my research, I came across something that I thought was odd. It was in one of their FAQs. It called out that if you use Wyndham points at a Caesars property, you will pay resort fees. And I thought, does that mean you don't pay on other properties? And so it took me a while, but I did find in their terms and conditions that you are not supposed to be charged resort fees

on free nights. So whether or not all of the individual hotels adhere to that, it does, that's in their program. So, that's really nice. I wish all the chains would do that. Yeah, me too. And I mean, thus far, the CASA looks like does not have any of those fees either. I mean, that's what we've reported. And the fees are kind of substantial on the Vacasa side because you got the taxes and the cleaning fee and whatever the other stuff you normally anticipate. Yeah. It really makes a big difference to the point values, doesn't it? Especially on a short stay because that cleaning fee becomes a much bigger percentage of your overall payment and you're not paying it when you use points. So that's such a good deal. Yeah, it really is. It really is. So and

I believe that it is that way because the cost didn't even take a credit card. So they don't have anything to charge at this point. There's no like credit card number in their system for me, I don't think so. That's really funny. Sanity. So anyway, yeah. So I don't anticipate being charged any sort of ancillary fees at all because I don't think there's like an in-person check-in or anything. So yeah, that's a monster value too. So all right. So Wyndham, you're getting there. You're getting there, Wyndham.

Getting close. Yeah. Got a little work to do. So let's get that elite program. Definitely on our radar. And we're looking forward, their advertising fee for, for the show. All right. So then that brings us to the post roast. So are you ready for the post roast? I am. My post roast was going to be that you did not include anything for the value of

Wyndham points, but then, then we decided on this Wyndham topic. So you ruined my post roast, Greg. So so you've already been roasted. That was that was what I had aside before we decided on the topic for this week. So, Greg, you you escaped. OK, well, good, good, good. So my post roast for you is this. You wrote a post whose title was, Greg's wrong. The choice privileges visa is totally worth a look right now. And I did. You did. And you wrote a whole post about how good that choice 75K plus sort of 4X everywhere offer is. And implied that my post said it wasn't worth a look. I mean, it was basically the title implied that title of your post supply that never mind the contents of your post. But my post was titled, what are choice points worth?

And should we buy points? True, True. So the focus of the post was not on the credit card a good deal. No. And then I said, I wrote in the post, I said, I described the choice offer, the credit card offer. And I said, thanks to this offer, many may be wondering what choice points are worth. So the point is my post was intended to help you decide whether that offer was a good offer, but not answer it for you. I happen to think that it's a great offer and most people should go for it. So, well, you did help me. You helped me decide that it was a great offer. So thank you. Thank you for that. There you go. And in fairness, I, I, I mentioned a couple of

times in the post that Greg's post did kind of come to the conclusion that maybe the choice privileges visa was worth it. But I felt like your, your tone and the choice privileges visa in the conclusion was like, eh, maybe. And originally, anyway, before the conclusion got changed, because the original conclusion that I read was missing some of the final details there. Yeah, you should have written me on that. Well, it got fixed later. But originally, what I saw was just focused on the spend and the return on spend and how much, you know, 4X is worth and is 4X worth enough points to make it a good return on spend. And I mean, I think it is a pretty darn good return on spend. But then when

you also look at all of the points you'd be earning in that first year, I think it becomes much more worth it because of the big spend bonus that comes in and the 4X everywhere and the historically high offer. I mean, then to me, that's, I think, a pretty exciting offer. Not as exciting as the Hilton offer, but a pretty exciting offer. Right. And in your defense, in my conclusion, when I was talking about the value of earning Forex everywhere, I said something like, you know, that this value is really good, but, but not enough to make me want to run out and get the card. And what I meant was the Forex component alone wasn't enough, but I didn't really spell that out. And I could totally see why someone would think that I was saying the card

overall, the offer overall is not, not worth running out to get. That's not what I intended. And so I really should go back and actually edit that and make that go. There you go. All right. Make that more clear. Greg saved me there. All right. Thank you, Greg. All right. So that then my friends brings us to the question of the week. And this week's question of the week is another hotel related question, but it's about two different programs other than the ones we've been talking about today. It's not about Wyndham. What? It's not about Wyndham. It's not about, it's not all about Wyndham, Craig. It is about, let's see, I'm trying to pull it up. I'm trying to remember.

No, I'm not trying to remember. I'm just trying to find it. There we go. I scrolled a little bit past it. So Chris asks, my wife is running three marathons in October. Three. Yes, she's nuts. That's him, not me.

Okay, he says that. So Chris says, we will be spending 15 nights in hotels and spending about five thousand dollars on hotels in your in your opinion should i get the chase hyatt card for the 60 000 points and the 9x points for the said hotel costs or the amex hilton surpass card for 180 000 points and the 12x points for the hotel charges thanks chris so chris is asking again whether to basically they're going to spend 15 nights and they're gonna spend five thousand dollars on hotels should they go after the hyatt card for the 60 000 point point bonus, which we'll talk about. I'm reading it the way that Chris wrote it here.

So the 60,000 point bonus and 9X on the hotel spend or the surpass card, 180,000 points and 12X on that five grand. What would you say? Well, first, let me clarify things a little bit. The Hyatt card gives you 9X only because you're earning you're, you're earning five X base points plus four X with the card. And it's really actually the, the height card gives you discover a status. So you'd actually be earning something like 5.1, five, three. I don't forget exactly earning some fraction more than five base points. And then, and then you get the four points per dollar with credit card. He didn't factor that in on the Hilton side though. Right. Right. No, exactly. And that was the first thing that stood out. That's why I said I'm reading it

the way that Chris wrote it because yeah, that was the first thing that stood out at me was that you included the elite or the hotel program based earnings on the Hyatt side. But if you did that on the Hilton side, if you get the surpass card, you're going to have automatic gold status, which gets you 18 points per dollar at most Hilton properties. And I say most because there are some of those brands that get you less. So a little bit depends on where you're staying, but let's stick with the majority or 18 points plus 12X using the card. So you're earning a minimum without any crazy Hilton promotion of 30 Hilton points per dollar on that 50 grand spend, not 12. So if you want to compare apples to apples, the 9X Hyatt, you got to compare that to 30X Hilton. And then it's not really a

60,000 point offer on that card either. So there's a couple of ways of answering that just from the points per dollar perspective. One is to realize that our reasonable redemption values for those are like exactly, Hilton is exactly one fourth of the value of Hyatt. So if you multiply the Hyatt nine points per dollar by four, you get 36 points per dollar, sort of the equivalent of 36 Hilton points per dollar. So you actually are doing better with Hyatt, even though it sounds like less with the number of points per dollar you're getting. The other thing, the post I published on Friday

about which hotel chains are most rewarding, I actually showed that Hyatt would be a more rewarding choice. So if it's just totally based on points per dollar, then the answer is Hyatt. If you're factoring in the value of the signup bonus, though, things get very different. So, you know, Nick wrote a great post about how valuable that Hilton surpass offer is right now. And so if you can be putting a lot of that first spend that's required to get the full signup offer, actually at Hilton properties, you're going to be getting just an incredible number of points in addition to signup bonus. And then eventually once you hit

$15,000 spend, you're going to be getting a free night, which is, you know, which can be used anywhere, any day of the week. Unlike the, the, the Hyatt card where the free night is up to category four. And so it's, it's much more, way, way more constrained than the Hilton one. So taken together, it's a little hard to say which one is better. I mean, I, I, think um if you were if you if you like the idea of having hilton and having sort of the gold status where you get free breakfast everywhere um there's a lot to be said for for going for that surpass card i i don't even think it's a hard decision. I think

surpass hands down. Surpass hands down. Because the Hilton, excuse me, the Hyatt offer is not a 60,000 point offer. That's how a Hyatt, well, yeah, it's their advertising. It's a 45,000 point offer. You're not actually getting 60,000 bonus points. And if you don't understand exactly why, we have a post about it, but you're getting just an extra point per dollar on that $15,000 spend over the one point you would ordinarily get. So it's 45,000 bonus points and 45,000 Hyatt points is worth $742.50 based on our reasonable redemption value of the 1.65 cents per point is what I think it was. And on the Hilton side, that same, actually less spend, the $10,000 spend will get you 180,000 points if you aren't targeted for the 200,000 point offer.

And just that 180,000 points, not including again, what you would earn on the spend, which you really should, but without including what you earn on the spend, that's a value of $720. Now, what you have to consider here too, though, is like Greg said, your spend is going to not only earn you a bunch of points from the hotel, but it's also going to probably earn you diamond status. Because if you're going to be spending $5,000 on hotels at 12 points per dollar, 5,000 times the 12 points per dollar, 5,000 times the 12 points for all that's the 60,000 points you need that just your hotel stay, we'll get you Hilton diamond status through the end of

March, 2023. So you're talking lounge access in addition to the regular benefits. Also, when you hit 15 K spend, you got the free night anywhere that Greg just talked about. So that's a great deal too. And then any other points you're earning based on 6X or 12X, the points you're earning on that spend to meet the minimum spending requirement are going to easily put the Hilton offer out in front of the Hyatt offer, I would say. And then on top of that, there's a good chance that Hilton is going to have a good bonus point offer. So right now we're saying that if Hyatt points are worth about four times what Hilton points are worth, then spending on a Hyatt card 9x at a hotel is probably a little bit better than earning 30x total on Hilton. Except that Hilton almost always has an opportunity to be earning 40 or 50 points per dollar.

So if you're a decent shot, you're going to have a chance to be earning a lot more than 30 points per dollar. You know, a year ago, I would have totally agreed with you. But in the past year, it feels like Hyatt has been more consistently had better promotions. And so, yeah, it used to be Hilton was the sort of promo god of the hotel chains. But we haven't seen them too much for a while, have we? I mean, you know i i guess i tune them out because it's always double or triple points right i mean it's a like i couldn't tell you what it is right now because once you tell me double points for like the ninth quarter in a row i'm kind of forget about it so here's something interesting i thought about as you're talking about the two the two uh bonuses so you're saying it the hyatt one's really a 45,000-point bonus.

The Hilton one is 180,000, right? Right. If you say that Hyatt points are worth four times Hilton points, then 45,000-point bonus is equivalent to 180,000 Hilton points, right? Even Steven is what we're saying. It's almost like they designed them that way. But the difference, of course, then if you use that metric is that then, okay, you got to figure that you're earning a minimum of three Hilton points per dollar on your spend to trigger that

offer. But probably realistically, you can meet the minimum spending requirements at six X because you could probably earn the six X because you earned six X on the surpass card at restaurants, at gas stations and at grocery stores. So pretty darn easy to hit the $10,000 spend with those bonus categories. And so now once you factored in the points earned from the minimum spend requirement, you're probably going to come out comfortably ahead with the Hilton offer, in my opinion. I think it'll be close, but I think your points about elite status are really where it's at. With the Hilton side, you might end up with, I think, around the same value in points. You end up with a much better free night certificate.

You end up with much better elite perks. That's my take on it. All right, there you go. So hopefully you figured it out now that you've listened to all of that, Chris. And good luck to your wife. My goodness, I've run two marathons in my life and they certainly were not in the same month

or the same year. They were barely in the same decade. So three in the same month. I mean, hats off to your wife. That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing. Good job to her in advance. That's right. All right, my friends, if you enjoy what we've been talking about today, you want to get on our email list. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on Facebook. Join the FrequentMiler Insiders on Facebook.

If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, ding the notification bell, do the same kind of thing in your podcast platforms. Leave us a review or a like or et cetera, et cetera. Thank you very much for being here with us today. And we will see you guys again next week. Well said.

Thanks. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye.