Wyndham Will Overthrow Marriott as the Largest Hotel Group in the World After La Quinta Acquisition

Wyndham Will Soon Acquire La Quinta

Today, Wyndham Worldwide made an announcement that it has finalized a deal with La Quinta to acquire La Quinta’s brand for 1.95 Billion Dollars. The acquisition is expected to occur by then end of 2018’s 2nd Quarter. Post-acquisition, Wyndham will have over 9,000 properties across 21 brands in 75 countries.

Currently, La Quinta has locations in only four countries; US, Mexico, Canada, Colombia and Honduras. La Quinta will continue under the brand but it’s loyalty program will merge with Wyndham. La Quinta has over 13 million members and they will become Wyndham Rewards Members.

Loyalty Programs

The press realease does not discuss any potential changes to the Wyndham program or how La Quinta members will be integrated in. It will be interesting to see how elite members will match up. Also, La Quinta Returns has a really interesting feature called LaQuinta Luxury Rewards that allows members to book non affiliated hotels with their La Quinta points. It would be unfortunate for people with a ton of La Quinta points to lose the ability to book award nights through this program.

Wyndham has two co-branded credit cards issued by BarclayCard. In December we covered some of the lesser known perks of Wyndham Rewards and why it’s co-branded cards are underrated. Current card offers can be found here. The current sign up bonuses are much less than we’ve seen in the past, so you may want to hold off on applying.

Conclusion

This merger is likely a good thing for people with La Quinta elite status. I did notice that their co-branded card has disappeared, though I can’t be sure when that happened. Wyndham members will have slightly more choices than they had before, but are unlikely to be majorly affected.

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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