the Jebba Journal: Expanding My Comfort Zone
A slightly convoluted (and long winded) redemption that saved me $1,800 over three nights
If you have been reading my newsletter, you’ll know I love to talk about and stay in hotels. I find hotels provide a lot of consistency and nowadays seem to be cheaper than alternatives like Airbnb. But I know my love of hotels isn’t shared by everyone.
What if you are traveling as part of a large group and want a kitchen? What if you have a dog who needs a yard, or just like having a bigger space all to yourself? Airbnb and other vacation rentals fit the bill quite nicely, but they aren’t without their flaws.
Yes, hotels are now charging absurd “resort/destination/bullshit fees,” increasing their costs, but Airbnb has also been called out for their comically long list of fees that can wind up doubling the listed price for a home.
Despite the hidden fees, the biggest issue I’ve had with Airbnb (which you may have guessed) is that I can’t really pay by using points. Thanks to my hundreds of hours wasted spent scouring credit card and travel forums, I’ve found out a suitable way to have my vacation home and eat it too. No, wait, that doesn’t sound right…..have my vacation home and stay in it too? Whatever.
First, some context
In the Jebba journal: Ninth Edition I talk about going to New York for the US Open tennis tournament. I enjoyed that experience so much I immediately started to plan another trip centered around live tennis.
I convinced my oldest brother and my dad to come with me to Palm Desert for the BNP Paribas Open (aka the Indian Wells Open). Here was the issue though: as much as I love them, I sure as shit was not going to share a hotel room with both of them.
With hotel prices reaching insane prices (think $350/night for the local Super 8 motel), our best bet was to look at a vacation rental through Airbnb. I quickly realized our plans may just be a pipe dream when small, one-bedroom units on Airbnb were also listed for ridiculous amounts. Then my hours and hours of diving headfirst into this hobby paid off once again in the form of Vacasa.
If you want the high level overview, scroll to the bottom for the Too Long, Didn’t Read (TLDR) version.
What is Vacasa?
Vacasa is competitor to Airbnb, listing private residences for short-term rentals, albeit with a much smaller footprint. What sets them apart is something that very few people know about or even utilize: They have a partnership with Wyndham Hotels (the hotel conglomerate that encompasses brands like Super 8, Ramada Inn, La Quinta, Travelodge, etc.).
What does this partnership entail you ask? Well dear reader, I hope you have figured out by now that Vacasa allows you to book using points, Wyndham points specifically.
Wyndham to Vacasa Redemption Rates
To book a rental on Vacasa using Wyndham points, the redemption rates are quite simple and based off the number of true bedrooms the rental has.
Each bedroom costs 15,000 Wyndham points per night
A one-bedroom rental is 15,000 points/night, two-bedrooms costs 30,000 points/night, etc. etc.
Points cover all taxes and fees, so one night in a one-bedroom is 15,000 points flat. No extra cash charges to worry about, no cleaning fees to deal with.
This is fantastic because you always know what the cost in points will amount to, regardless of the listed cash price. Do you and your partner want to travel with another couple and need two separate bedrooms for two nights? You know it will cost a total of 60,000 points regardless of if you choose the rental being listed at $400/night or $600/night (15,000 per bedroom x 2 bedrooms x 2 nights =60,000 points).
Vacasa to the Rescue
After I remembered this Wyndham to Vacasa trick, which would allow me to book a private residence without paying the listed cash price, I quickly went to their website to find a two-bedroom house for my dates.
On the screenshot above, I typed in my destination, dates, and number of guests then hit “search.” Once the results page came up, I narrowed down my results further by filtering to only show two-bedroom rentals.
There were two really solid options to choose from, and one of them actually had a “bonus room.” This was a separate upstairs loft off of the living room that had a full-sized bed. Remember how Vacasa prices homes based off of true number of bedrooms? Well since this “bonus room” didn’t actually qualify as it’s own bedroom, I still only had to pay the price for a two-bedroom rental even though I’m really getting three separate rooms with actual beds (not a pullout sofa).
This is how you can really leverage their program if you do some extra digging to find houses that can sleep six people for example, but are categorized as two-bedroom.
Vacasa Quirks
There are a few small caveats when booking Vacasa using Wyndham points that everyone should be aware of.
First - redemptions using points are only available for rentals listed below a specific cash price.
This threshold is $350 per bedroom, per night, AFTER taxes and fees. So if you find a one-bedroom house that is listed at $279/night, but when you click “book now” you see it actually becomes $352/night after the taxes/fees are applied, you won’t be able to book it using points. For a two-bedroom rental, the threshold becomes $700 per night after taxes and fees, etc. etc.
In reality, this doesn’t happen very often unless you are booking during a very popular time, and is even less likely as you look at two and three bedroom rentals since it’s based again on the number of bedrooms.
Second - You cannot book using points on the Vacasa website, you have to call over the phone to book to secure a rental.
I thought this was going to be a bigger issue given customer service holding times since the pandemic, but in reality the Vacasa staff members who helped me out were very knowledgeable, friendly, and my hold times were less than two minutes.
Third - If you are buying Wyndham points, it can take several days to show up in your account.
I’ll talk more about this in the next section, just keep it in mind.
My Booking Experience
First, I created Wyndham and Vacasa accounts and used the same email for both to keep things simple. Then I went to Vacasa to look for potential options.
Once I had two promising rental options, I called the Vacasa phone line dedicated to booking with Wyndham points (800-441-1034) and if the two rentals were available to book using points. Sure enough both were available! Great, now I just needed the points.
Quick note — There are seemingly random points blackout dates set by the property owners that we won’t be able to see, although I’m guessing this is more to do with the cash price threshold mentioned above than anything else. Still, it’s always best practice to call and make sure your rental is available to book on points before transferring or buying points.
If you are anything like me, you have exactly 0 Wyndham points to your name. Fret not, as Wyndham points typically are not very valuable, so they frequently offer promotions if you want to buy them outright. There was 40% bonus when I bought my points, so instead of needing to buy 90,000 points (15,000 points per bedroom x 2 bedrooms x 3 nights), I actually only needed to buy about 65,000 points.
This wound up costing me exactly $812 and it took about 48 hours to show up in my Wyndham account. I was fine knowing it can take a few days for the points to show up since I had two rentals to choose from. The chances both got booked up in a matter of days when I was looking months in advance seemed extremely low.
Once the points were in my account, I called the phone line again, gave them the property ID, the dates I planned to stay, the number of guests, and my Wyndham account information. A few seconds later I had an email saying the rental was booked!
How I Saved So Much Money
Because I was looking a very popular time to go to Palm Desert, cash prices were astronomical. I actually booked before Vacasa implemented the $350 per bedroom per night limit. The listed cash price for the rental was right at $2,600 after taxes and fees for three nights!
Would I split a $2,600 with my dad and brother ($867 each) for only three nights??? No, hell no, I like live tennis but not that much. But would I book that same house if it only cost a TOTAL of $812 for three nights? Absolutely. Buying Wyndham points and using those to book the exact same house I was able to cut our lodging expense by 2/3.
All-in, because taxes and fees are included when using points, we each are spending $270 for three night in a private house where we each get a separate room to sleep in. All of this for less than what it would have cost to stay in a double-queen room at the Super 8 motel.
Fortunately, I booked this before Vacasa implemented their new cash threshold, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to book this property (after taxes/fees, the cash price was $866/night, well over the new $750 limit for two bedrooms to be bookable on points).
Even so, after the new cash price limit implementation, we could have still looked for a two-bedroom rental that would cost up to $2,099 and still saved around $1,200 by booking with points ($350 x 2 bedrooms x 3 nights = $2,100), of which there are a few still available, albeit farther away from the tennis stadium location.
Too Long, Didn’t Read
Okay, so just to recap….
There is a vacation rental / Airbnb competitor called Vacasa, which allows you to book properties using Wynhdam Hotel points instead of paying the cash rate. The equation to calculate how many points a rental will costs is 15,000 points per bedroom, per night. So if you want to spend two nights somewhere, a one-bedroom rental will cost 30,000 points total. A two-bed will be 60,000 points total, and so on and so forth.
“But I don’t even have any Wyndham points!” Neither did I, but thankfully you can buy them for a decent price, and often during an advertised sale offering 40% more points (so 50,000 points actually becomes 70,000 points, etc.).
You can then use these points to book the rental you want, as long as the total cash price after taxes and fees isn’t greater than $350 per bedroom per night. Using the example below, on the main search page (first photo) this rental says it’s only $181/night, well below the $350/night limit. But when you click on the rental, the second image shows the true cost for two nights after taxes and fees becomes $336/night, just under the $350/night threshold and still available to book with points.
Final Thoughts
Even with Vacasa recently devaluing this partnership by implementing the cash price threshold, this is still a hidden secret that can help the Airbnb crowd save hundreds of dollars on private rentals.
It does take some extra steps, especially if you are buying points, but the juice is most definitely worth the squeeze in my opinion and something I plan to continue to utilize for specific occasions. Do you want help trying to book a Vacasa rental using only points? Leave me a comment below and consider sharing this with an friends or family who are obsessed with Airbnb stays but also want to save money on their next vacation.
Spectacular savings for a trip to the desert during probably the most popular time of the year. Once again, Jebba does the impossible.