Wyndham Rewards - full map?
 

I ended up with 48K Wyndham Rewards points that I didn't expect to have (thought I'd need them for a trip, canceled).

Now I can't find any good ways to burn them.

• Every time I've planned a trip and actually needed a hotel, the Wyndham-chain hotels have all looked like dumps.
  
• Places where Wyndham-chain hotels seem nice (cities with 100,000 people and no / expensive nonstops serving them) mostly seem too impractical to get to on a cheapskate solo-traveler tight schedule (e.g. fly somewhere easy-to-get-to on a Friday evening, fly home Sunday evening, avoid renting a car).

TravelIsFree hasn't done a full map, which I find the easiest way to process a huge dump of "where I could go" information. Has anyone?

Baymont, Days Inn, Dolce, Hawthorn, Howard Johnson, Knights Inn, Microtel, Ramada, Super8, Travelodge, Tryp, Wingate, Wyndham, Wyndham Garden, Wyndham Grand

If not ... any FTers willing to just start rattling off nice continental USA Wyndham-chain hotels that are easy to get to by plane + public transit and surrounded by things to do on foot / by public transit?

For example, Chicago seems to fit this description with the Wyndham Grand. (Unfortunately, I've got places to stay in Chicago. But learning about more like this would be great!)

Award Mapper has, but they haven't kept it up to date, and by now it's at least a couple years out of date. So you can certainly use it as a starting point, but then double-check on the Wyndham website.

But if you needed the points once, how do you know you won't need them within 4 years (the hard expiration time). Yes, you'll have to do something to keep them from soft-expiring every 18 months, but you can wait 4 years until you have to "burn" them. Otherwise, what if you "burn" them and then need them again? :confused:

But, I'm confused, are not considering any places where public transportation is near useless (eg, SoCal, Phoenix, etc)? Yes, as a solo traveler myself, there are cities where the public transportation is great, and I don't rent a car if i"m staying in the ccity, but there are other cities where the public transportation is way too limiting, and getting around by car and parking is easy, and I tend to rent cars there, rather than wasting time on hard-to-figure-out bus transfers that take half the day because I would have to transfer so many times.

And, in my experience, WyndhamRewads is more likely to be useful in areas where you'd need to rent a car anyway than in cities where you want to do everything by public transportation.

But that comes back to the "why burn now" question.

I can't find a nice place to burn my points on the West Coast! We burned 3 nights in NYC last year, which was great but I'm not going to fly across the country to spend 3 nights. I've only got 6 more months and then they will expire from inactivity. Any ideas??

You've got 3 years or so before they expire "hard". So for now I'd concentrate on figuring out the cheapest way to generate "activity" every 18 months in the assumption that maybe if you give it another year or two you'll figure out another place you want to go whether using them makes sense.

In another thread you said you're cancelling the card. Why not convert it to the no-fee Wyndham card instead, then buy something really cheap ($1 or more) to generate 1 point once a year or so to keep both the card alive and to extend your expiration?

Bohemiana & kitkatft -- You could try visiting the redemption exploration site on Wyndham Rewards site (WyndhamRewards.com/Redeem) to find potential options for redemption including sister properties from Club Wyndham, Worldmark and many others.

--Wyndham Alison

I agree a full map, broken down by brand, would be nice.

But here are a few Wyndhams in U.S. city-center locations, besides the Chicago one you mentioned, and the NYC options mentioned elsewhere in this thread:

• Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill
• Wyndham Cleveland at Playhouse Square
• Wyndham Houston Medical Center
• Wyndham New Orleans French Quarter
• Wyndham Philadelphia Historic District
• Wyndham San Diego Harbour Lights

The Wyndham Santa Monica is a good option to use points on the West Coast - it's right on the Santa Monica pier, near 3rd Street Promenade; it's usually very expensive on summer weekends.