Your Guide to the Wyndham Award Categories

Wyndham caters to business and leisure travelers by offering over 9,000 distinctive properties worldwide. As a member of the Wyndham Rewards program, you can choose from brands including La Quinta, Days Inn, Travelodge, Ramada, Dolce Hotels and Resorts and Wyndham Grand. With clearly defined redemption categories and easy-to-use online tools, Wyndham offers a straightforward loyalty program for points enthusiasts.

Redeeming your points

The Wyndham Rewards program offers two simple options for members to redeem their award nights:

• Go Free – Redeem 7,500, 15,000 or 30,000 points per night, per bedroom, with no blackout dates.

• Go Fast – Redeem 1,500, 3,000 or 6,000 points plus some cash to stay at participating locations. This option is convenient for members lacking enough points to redeem free nights.

» Learn more: The complete guide to redeeming Wyndham points

Navigating the three-tiered award chart

Wyndham offers one of the most user-friendly award charts with no dynamic pricing or peak/off-peak dates. Instead, properties are divided into three tiers:

• Tier 1 properties – 7,500 points to Go Free and 1,500 points plus cash to Go Fast.

• Tier 2 properties – 15,000 points to Go Free and 3,000 points plus cash to Go Fast.

• Tier 3 properties – 30,000 points to Go Free and 6,000 points plus cash to Go Fast.

Exploring the possibilities

The Wyndham Rewards site has an excellent tool to locate properties in your desired point category: a points filter that lets you filter hotel search results according to the number of points you’ll need for an award night. Exploring worldwide locations, within a specific point category, is easy when you apply the points filter. Run a search and you’ll see a comprehensive list of hotels within each tier.

Tier 1 has about 2,400 hotels in convenient locations such as:

Tier 2 is the largest category, with about 5,900 properties worldwide including:

Tier 3 has around 270 hotels in some highly desirable vacation destinations:

» Learn more: Wyndham Rewards: The complete guide

Tips and tricks

1. There are four levels of membership in the Wyndham Rewards program: Blue, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. From time to time, Wyndham offers a “status match” for elite members of other hotel loyalty programs. If you have status with any other hotel loyalty program, keep an eye out for Wyndham’s status match offers.

2. Don’t let your points expire! Know these Wyndham policies:

• Points expire after four years, so you cannot indefinitely stockpile points.

• Points may also be forfeited if the member has no account activity for 18 consecutive months.

• Points are not transferable to another member.

The bottom line

The Wyndham Rewards program is not as complicated or robust as many of the other well-known hotel programs in the U.S., but that doesn't mean that you can't find value for award redemptions across their various categories.

As you continue earning your Wyndham points (or if you've already accumulated some), make sure you put in the time and effort to use their points filter to identify properties in the areas where you might be traveling that offer solid award rates. NerdWallet values Wyndham points at 1.2 cents per point. This is an average value, so any rates you can find above that valuation will represent a good deal.