Wyndham vs LaQuinta reward programs
 

How are Wyndham and LaQuinta reward programs going to be merged? Will there be any cross exchange of points, i.e. can Wyndham points be used at LaQuinta?

LaQuinta discontinued their Visa rewards card several years ago, this eliminating one source of points. Wyndham currently offers a promotion to pick up their Visa card, which I have done, but most of my travels are to a destination which has no convenient Wyndham but a very nice LaQuinta Inn & Suites, so eventual use of Wyndham points at LQ would be helpful. If they can't work it out, I will go back to putting all purchases on an airline or Amtrak card.

You can already transfer points between your WyndhamRewards account and you r LaQuinta Returns accounts, if you have both and you've linked them together. Log in to either website and look for the links about the other program, there you'll find how to link them together.

I've transferred from WR to LQ several times over the past few months, and it's instant. I just refresh the LQ page (I don't even have to log out and log back in) and the points are instantly showing up there. (I don't remember if you have to do this linking at both websites, or whether it's automatically done at the other website when you do it on one website.)

One reason to transfer to LQ besides wanting to do LQ awards stays: Wyndham points have a "hard" expiration at 4 years after you earn them, but that's "lost" when you transfer to LQ, and presumably won't be "remembered" when they merge together. So presumably you can "reset" that 4-year "hard" expiration by transferring to LQ and then waiting for the merge before they're recombined into WR.

I'm imagining any conversion of points would be roughly 1:1 for La Quinta to Wyndham. My gut feeling is that when they merge the programs, Wyndham will also release their rumored tier-based redemption system (so that it'll be a bit like the La Quinta program in that regard, although hopefully a bit less variable.)

I noticed that La Quinta has some premium benefits as well (such as a thank-you gift upon check-in for elite members.) I wonder if any of that may translate over to a merged system or not.

The thank you gift for Elite on the LQ side is a bit overplayed. It usually translates into a bottle of water and either a prepackaged "forever soft" cookie or a small package of some version of trail mix. Nice, but not enough to sway a decision for or against a given hotel choice.