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Wyndham launched a tool on Tuesday that enables members of its loyalty program to redeem points to attend live music concerts, major sports events, and other travel experiences.
The new effort is called Wyndham Rewards Experiences and over 100 activities were available at launch, including ones from Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Minor League Baseball, and Caesars Rewards.
This year, A Skift megatrend was about the growing demand for “live tourism.”
Wyndham hotel owners are also being given the ability to work with the franchisor directly to create property-specific packages and offerings centered around local events.
Many of the experiences are offered as dynamic auctions, where members bid for the chance to get tickets to events, such as a sold-out Vans Warped Tour in Long Beach, California, and a Country Jam in Grand Junction, Colorado. In other cases, there are fixed-point totals for redemption, starting at 2,500 points each. (For reference, a stay at a typical Wyndham property often earns around 1,000 points.)
Experience providers wanting to join Wyndham’s platform by offering travel experiences as redemption options could work through the group’s loyalty and partnerships team, led by Michael Shiwdin, a spokesperson said.
Wyndham Rewards Experiences is powered on the backend by Points.com and affiliates.
Tuesday’s new effort is the first time the company has ventured into live tourism. Wyndham, which has 9,300 hotels, began offering tours and activities separately as part of vacation packages for sale on its site (with inventory from partners like online travel agency Viator) about five months ago.
Wyndham said it has over 115 million members in its loyalty program and that one out of every two check-ins at a Wyndham hotel last year was by a member.
Wyndham said that later this year, it would also adjust how it reimburses hotel owners for guest free-night stay redemptions.
“A hotel that has both high quality and high occupancy is going to see a more generous reimbursement than a hotel that has high occupancy but only average quality,” a spokesperson said.
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