UPDATE: The hotel left the Wyndham family shortly after this post. You snooze, you lose.
Sedona Rouge Hotel and Spa is a 4-star hotel in gorgeous Sedona. With a great location in town, it’s part of the Wyndham Trademark Collection, which has some of the best hotels in the Wyndham group. Since the devaluation last year (which came after the massive devaluation 2 years ago), most (if not all) of them went up to 30,000 points per night, including Sedona Rouge. However, the price is back down to 15k again!
{ View of red rocks from hotel rooftop }
While researching hotel prices for a blog post about Sedona hotels, I was surprised to find the following prices in October 2021. I checked a few other dates and confirmed they all say 15k per night.
As you can see, multiple room types are bookable for 15k (including the King room not shown). The Spa Room is a romantic room in the Spa building with a tub. There’s also a note about a resort fee:
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t charged this fee during my Oct 2020 stay. When you look at the details in the “Total for Stay” link on an award stay, there’s no mention of any fees. So I believe the “points cannot be used to pay the fee” is referring to paid stays. I’d recommend taking a screenshot of the $0 total in case any questions come up.
Discussion
This is a phenomenal value. While there are better values for Wyndham points with entire cabins from Vacasa for 15k, that booking process is more involved. As mentioned, I stayed at Sedona Rouge last year and loved it. Sedona itself was the star, and the hotel rooftop has some great views of Thunder Mountain and Sugarloaf Mountain. There was also a nightly social with free wine. The 24hr Safeway next door was a great convenience.
Sedona is an expensive hotel market, with 4-star hotels routinely priced above $300 on weekends. Getting 2 Wyndham cents per point is an excellent value. In comparison, you’d be paying 55-60k Marriott, 60-70k Hilton, 40k IHG or 15k Hyatt for a similar or worse hotel there.
Here are the lowest paid and award rates I compiled for chain hotels in Sedona. I compared late Feb (Fri and Sat nights) and late Oct (Sat and Sun nights) as they are my favorite times to visit for balanced price, weather, and crowd. Note that paid price is before any resort fees. In my opinion, Sedona Rouge is the clear winner in redemption value – especially for a short weekend stay. For longer stays involving weekdays, there may be other good values. For example, despite the terrible weekend redemption rate at the HIE, I have it booked in Feb at 66k for 4 nights (4th night free), with a mix of weekend and weekdays. Due to the latest IHG dynamic pricing, I value 66k IHG slightly lower than 60k Wyndham, but of couse HIE is not 4 star.
Widespread Award Price Reduction?
I did check a few of my favorite Wyndhams to see if the points god had reverted them to 15k as well. Alas, they were still 30k, including Wyndham Beacon Hill, TRYP Times Square, and Santa Monica. However, I see other good values that I didn’t pay attention to previously that are now at 15k, such as Club Wyndham Midtown 45 in NYC and Ramada Inn West Hollywood (prime location in LA). I’m not sure if they were 30k after last year’s changes, though they seem almost too good to be 15k. Nonetheless, I’d book this sooner rather than later.
Have you noticed other high-value Wyndham properties fall to 15k?
Spend a night at that Ramada and then let’s talk
That one is all about the location.