MeliaRewards – loyalty program of Melia Hotels International – quietly drops Wyndham Rewards as its partner and instead introduces mysterious new partner.

I have to say, I saw it coming. I mean the part about dropping Wyndham Rewards. Back in February this year I got the following email from Wyndham Rewards:

As a valued member of the Wyndham Rewards® Program, we would like to provide you with an important update to your member account. Effective February 27, 2017, MeliáRewards will no longer be available as an earning preference of the Wyndham Rewards program. You will now earn Wyndham Rewards points for your Qualified Stays at Participating Hotels at the following participating Hotel Chains:

• Wyndham Hotels and Resorts®
• Wyndham Grand®
• Wyndham Garden®
• Wingate by Wyndham®
• Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham®
• Ramada®
• Days Inn ®
• Super 8®
• Baymont Inn & Suites®
• Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham®
• Howard Johnson®
• Travelodge®
• Knights Inn®
• TRYP by Wyndham®
• Dolce Hotels and Resorts®

To sweeten the news, they credited my account with 1,000 points (not that I found any use for it since).

I turn, MeliaRewards removed the option of converting points into Wyndham Rewards on its website. I can still see it on the ‘Our Partners’ page…

…But when you go to the transfer page, it’s not in the drop-down menu anymore.
Instead I can see a new option on the list: Enrich. Could it beMalaysian Airlines’ Enrich loyalty program? 😉 There was no official announcement, so I guess we will wait and see!

Previous set up between MeliaRewards and WyndhamRewards made sense for me: they were both managing TRYP hotel chain – Melia in Spain and Wyndham Group – in the US and the rest of the world.

With the recent change I find this whole situation with TRYP by Wyndham hotels a bit awkward. Seems that one can book Spanish TRYPs via either MeliaRewards or Wyndham Rewards. Same goes for award booking and points earning. In that close partnership the previous deal made sense and it’s a shame it’s gone. The conversion rate between MeliaRewards and WyndhamRewards was quite bad, but it was still an access to very big US hotel chain.

Maybe the separation has something to do with recent expansion of Melia hotels in the US in Miami (ME Miami), New York (INNSIDE New York NoMad) and Orlando (Melia Orlando).

I recently stayed at INNSIDE New York NoMad and was very happy to redeem a room there for only 18,000 MeliaRewards points per night. Let’s hope that Melia will grow its presence in the US fairly quickly, which will provide a lot of good redemption options.

My opinion

I always happy to see more partners to transfer my MeliaRewards points to, but it’s a shame when old partners are going. Maybe Melia and Wyndham will come up with a new partnership in the near future.