Wyndham has announced they are adding the AmericInn brand and it’s 200 properties to the Wyndham loyalty program. Wyndham Rewards will officially replace the AmericInn’s Easy Rewards loyalty program on March 4th, 2018. AmericInn loyalty members can continue to earn and redeem points until March 3rd, after that date any unused points will be converted to Wyndham. The conversion rate will be 1 easy rewards point = 1,500 and these automatic conversions are expected to be finished by March 31st, 2018.
AmericInn’s reward program was fairly straight forward. You’d earn 1 point for every night you stayed and 10 points gave you $40 cash or $75 room voucher. Given that 10 points will convert to 15,000 Wyndham points and that is enough for a free night at any Wyndham property I think the conversion rate is more than fair. AmericInn did also have an elite program (requiring 5 nights or 3 stays at different AmericInn properties) and Wyndham isn’t giving AmericInn members any elite status.
I don’t think there are really any interesting AmericInn properties to use free night awards at, but I’d be happily proven wrong in the comments. Earlier in the year Wyndham announced the acquisition of La Quinta for $1.95 billion.
Hat tip to reader Bill M
I would imagine Wyndham points are redeemed almost exclusively at their higher end properties. I wonder if they use this as a selling point to potential franchisees of their lower-end brands…
Do you think 2 stays at the AmericInn will qualify you for the 15K bonus?
What 15k bonus?
Stay twice, get free night promotion:
https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/hotel-deals/free-hotel-night
Ah ok, I think you’d need to wait for the integration to be complete first.
It’s getting much more difficult to find a decent hotel for business travel in the Wyndham group. I’m putting my employees in Marriott, Best Western, Hyatt and some Choice hotels depending on location, in order to find a decent room that is clean and comfortable and doesn’t have assorted ne’er-do-wells milling about the parking lot.
I’ve got about 100k Wyndham points left and haven’t used any of them for a couple of years at least. I think Wyndham needs to step up and push their franchisees to fix up their properties and clean them better if they don’t want to be known as “Motel 6 with a fancier name”.
I know they have some really nice hotels but I haven’t found in the cities where I work. Then again, I can stay at Marriott for $29/night so I guess I don’t have much incentive to look too hard.
Where do you find a listing of these time share properties? I’d like to get better value out of my Wyndham points. Thanks.
I thought Wyndham points specifically excluded timeshare properties?
Almost all of Wyndham properties are complete dumps that I’d never even consider staying at. I’ll stick with SPG/Hyatt.
This, of course, is the problem with having only one redemption level. You’re never going to redeem points for an AmericInn room, And you’re unlikely to earn any points there, either. If for some reason you wanted to stay at one of their hotels, it will probably be cheaper “gaming” one of the online booking websites like hotels.com.
Wyndham properties can vary in quality and points can take you far during peak season at certain locations. I wonder if it would be worth it to accumulate the cheapest AmericInn points possible for 1:1 night transfers to Wyndham.
It’s not 1:1 night transfers, it’s 10:1?
Oh oops. I misread it at 1 point will become 15k. 10 points? Not at all worth chasing. My mistake.
I think Thelement means after the merger, stay in the cheapo AmericInn and redeem at the higher end Wyndham as redemption on the cheap rooms would be a waste.
Yup that makes sense. Although you won’t earn many points on the cheapo AmericInn stays
I will agree there is value in peak season rates. For example, I had to get two rooms in a large city during a major sporting event (football, golf, curling? I don’t remember.) Even the Motel 6s and Super 8s were charging $200 and up a night.
I was able to use my Wyndham points at a Ramada that was asking $300-400 a night when their normal rate was about $100. I still got them for the 15,000 points/room so I got great value for my points.
Using the 45k points from my Wyndham Barclaycard bonus for the Wyndham in Boston. Saved me over $1000, hotels in Boston in June are crazy expensive.
definitely varies. A property I stay at regularly in TN can be over $600 a night such as during July 4th. Usually closer to $250 a night most the time now.
Wyndham seems set on being king of the low end market.
Agreed. I’m waiting for the Motel 6 acquisition announcement next – although technically they’re owned by Blackstone.