Wyndham Hotels and Resorts

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts is an international hotel and resort chain based in the United States. It has locations in China, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador,[2] Turkey,[3] Germany,[4] the UK, the Caribbean, the UAE, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia and Margarita Island in Venezuela.[5] On June 1, 2018, Wyndham Worldwide spun-off Wyndham Hotels & Resorts as its own company, and Wyndham Worldwide was renamed Wyndham Destinations.[6] As of December 31, 2019, it has 9,280 hotels, including two that are owned by the company.[1]

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc.
Public
Traded as
IndustryHotel
Founded1981 (1981)
Dallas, Texas, U.S.
FounderTrammell Crow
HeadquartersParsippany, New Jersey, U.S.
Number of locations
9,280 across 20 brands[1] (2019)
Key people
Geoffrey A. Ballotti (President)
BrandsWyndham Grand, Dolce, Wyndham, TRYP, Esplendor, Dazzler, Trademark, La Quinta, Wingate, Wyndham Garden, AmericInn, Ramada, Baymont, Microtel, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson, Travelodge, Hawthorn
Websitecorporate.wyndhamhotels.com

History

Founding

Wyndham Hotel Corporation was founded in 1981 in Dallas, Texas, by Trammell Crow, the president of Trammel Crow Company (TCC).[7] The company appears to have been named after a friend of Crow's, a woman named Wyndham Robertson, who wrote a profile of him for Fortune. As the company grew, it eventually merged with a hotel REIT called Patriot American Hospitality (PAH). Patriot American organized the combined company as a paired-share REIT, in which Patriot owned the real estate assets and leased the hotels to Wyndham to run. In 1999, Patriot merged with Wyndham Hotels, forming a single company under the Wyndham name and dropping its REIT status.[8]

Expansion

The firm grew rapidly in the late 1990s, acquiring multiple portfolios of hotels and renaming them Wyndhams. In 1998, in an effort to build an upscale limited-service brand, the company acquired the Summerfield Hotel Corporation and renamed it Summerfield Suites by Wyndham. Wyndham Garden Hotels are smaller properties, usually full-service, that are located in suburban or airport locations. Later that year, the combined company introduced a short-lived luxury brand, Grand Bay Hotels & Resorts, which would include 11 hotels that the company had acquired over the past few years and would turn Patriot into a multi-brand hotel operating and ownership organization. The company also included several European properties, including The Great Eastern Hotel in the City of London.

However, the company's rapid growth drained cash and the firm was unable to continue to grow on its own. In March, 1999, the group agreed to a $1 billion restructuring when a consortium of private equity firms, including Thomas H. Lee Partners and Apollo Real Estate Advisors, assumed control of the company. They renamed it Wyndham International. The company's paired share status was dropped, and Wyndham International re-emerged as a C corporation.

From 1999 to 2004, the firm struggled to pay down debt and was forced to sell off many of the hotels it had acquired in the late 1990s, often at a deep discount in an industry still suffering from the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The effort to expand, the Grand Bay Hotels & Resorts brand was canceled, and the brand's franchised limited-service offerings, Summerfield Suites and Wyndham Garden Hotels, continued to lose units as hotels converted out of the system. Many of the Summerfield Suites hotels were sold to the Intercontinental Hotels Group and were converted to Staybridge Suites hotels.

Wyndham Hotel Group

Wyndham Hotel Group offers brands in lodging franchising, vacation ownership, vacation rentals and vacation exchange. It is composed of more than 9,000 hotels under 21 brands spanning more than 75 countries in six continents, competing in brand markets ranging from economy to upscale. Wyndham Worldwide is headquartered in Orlando, Florida and has more than 40,000 employees around the world.[9] Lodging management services are provided to upscale properties through Wyndham Hotel Management.

In early 2008, Global Hyatt Corporation announced that Wyndham Destinations would purchase US Franchise Systems, Inc., owner of the Microtel and Hawthorn Suites brands, for $150 million.[10] The transaction closed July 21, 2008. US Franchise Systems had previously sold the America's Best Inn (formerly Best Inns) chain to the Country Hearth Inns chain in 2005. That holding company is now known as America's Best Franchising Inc.

Wyndham bought the Wisconsin-based Exel Inn chain in 2008, and converted all 22 of its properties to Wyndham brands.[11]

In 2010, Wyndham Destinations acquired the TRYP hotel brand from Sol Meliá Hotels & Resorts of Spain. The brand, subsequently renamed Tryp by Wyndham, is positioned as a "select-service, midmarket" brand representing approximately 13,000 rooms and caters to business and leisure travelers in cosmopolitan cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Lisbon, New York, Frankfurt, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Istanbul, etc.[12]

In late 2016, Wyndham Hotel Group announced its acquisition of Latin America's leading Fën Hotels, adding 26 management contracts across Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and the U.S. including two new Fën-built Wyndham Grand hotels opening in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Asunción, Paraguay. With the addition of Fën Hotels’ signature Esplendor Boutique Hotel and Dazzler Hotel brands, Wyndham Hotel Group’s portfolio of distinct brands grew to 18.[13]

In the summer of 2017, Wyndham Hotel Group announced plans to acquire the Minnesota-based AmericInn hotel brand and its management company, Three Rivers Hospitality, from Northcott Hospitality for $170 million. AmericInn’s portfolio consisted of 200 primarily franchised hotels with approximately 11,600 rooms in 21 states, predominately in the Midwestern U.S., Ohio Valley, and Mountain states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and North Dakota.[14]

In October 2017, Wyndham launched its first soft brand product, the Trademark Hotel Collection, a collection of more than 50 upper-midscale-and-above hotels in Europe and the U.S.[15]

In late 2017, Wyndham Hotel Group announced an agreement with American Hotel Income Properties REIT Inc. (AHIP) to convert 44 existing hotels across the U.S. to Wyndham’s Baymont Inn & Suites, Travelodge, and Super 8 brands. Furthermore, AHIP has also newly acquired two additional hotels joining the Wyndham portfolio. The agreement boosted the company’s already strong presence in the U.S. midscale and economy hotel landscape with locations near Nashville, Tenn.; Kansas City, Kan.; Jefferson City, Mo.; Lincoln, Neb.; and Buffalo, N.Y.[16]

On May 31 2018, Wyndham Worldwide Corp (NYSE: WYN) completed its purchase of La Quinta Holdings hotel franchisor (900 hotels and 89,000+- rooms) and hotel management businesses for $1.95 billion in cash. With the acquisition of La Quinta hotels, WYN then spun off its hotels and resorts into Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH), a hotel group with 19 brands and over 9,000 hotels across more than 75 countries.[17]

Brands

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts includes 20 brands, split into 6 categories:[18][19][20]

Distinctive
  • Wyndham Grand

Upscale

Lifestyle
  • TRYP
  • Esplendor Boutique Hotels
  • Dazzler
  • Trademark Collection

Midscale

Economy

Extended Stay

Wyndham Franchisee Association

Wyndham Destinations' franchisees have formed an independent association called Owners 8 Association to present their concerns and grievances to Wyndham Destinations.[21] The association has argued that individual franchisees have currently limited role in Wyndham's decision making.

Wyndham Hotel Group's Former CEO Eric A. Danziger, in an interview in 2009 with Asian Indian Hotel Owners magazine, emphasized that Wyndham maintains cordial relationship with franchisees. He also stated that each of Wyndham brands maintain an advisory board of individual property owners.[22]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed suit against Wyndham in June 2012 following a security breach that led to the theft of payment card data for hundreds of thousands of Wyndham customers. Wyndham decided to fight the lawsuit in court, unlike many companies, which often try to settle FTC data-security enforcement actions quickly. In April 2014, United States District Court for the District of New Jersey Judge Esther Salas denied Wyndham's motion to dismiss, in a much anticipated decision to this case.[23]

Acquisitions

In June 2005, Wyndham International was acquired by affiliates of the Blackstone Group, for $3.24 billion and taken private. In the subsequent months, many of its hotels were sold to Goldman Sachs Group and Columbia Sussex. Blackstone rebranded most of the remaining assets as LXR Luxury Resorts and sold the Wyndham and Wyndham Garden Hotel brands to Cendant. Blackstone sold Summerfield Suites to Hyatt Hotels, which renamed it Hyatt House.

On August 1, 2006, all Cendant hotel brands became part of Wyndham Worldwide. Wyndham Worldwide consists of the following brands of hotels: Baymont Inn & Suites, Days Inn, Howard Johnson's, Microtel, Ramada, Super 8, Travelodge, Wyndham, Wyndham Garden Hotels, Hawthorn Suites, and Wingate by Wyndham. Besides hotels, the company also operates Wyndham Vacation Resorts (formerly Fairfield Resorts) and WorldMark by Wyndham (formerly Trendwest) time share resorts.

In 2013, Wyndham Worldwide acquired Shell Vacations Club for $102 million including $153 million of debt.[24]

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References
  1. "Form 10-K - Wyndham Hotels & Resorts" (PDF). Securities and Exchange Commission.
  2. (in Spanish) El Universo. El nuevo hotel Wyndham tiene financiado ya el 31% de la obra. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
  3. "Wyndham hotels in Turkey". Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, LLC. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  4. "Wyndham hotels in Germany". Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, LLC. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  5. "Wyndham hotel in Margarita".
  6. "Wyndham Worldwide Completes Spin-Off Of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts; Becomes Wyndham Destinations" (Press release). June 1, 2018. Retrieved 2018-12-31.
  7. "Trammell Crow leaves lasting lodging imprint following death". Trammell Crow leaves lasting lodging imprint following death. Hotel Business. 7 February 2009. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  8. Blum, Ernest (2 March 1999). "Patriot American to change name to Wyndham". Travel Weekly. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  9. "Getting to Know Wyndham Hotel Group". Wyndham Hotel Group website. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  10. "HVS EMEA Hospitality Enews - Week Ending 6 June 2008". Hospitality News. 9 June 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  11. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on June 4, 2013. Retrieved August 15, 2013.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  12. "Wyndham Hotel Group to Acquire Tryp Hotel Brand from Sol Meliá". Wyndham Destinations Press Releases. Wyndham Destinations. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  13. "Wyndham Hotel Group Acquires Fën Hotels - Wyndham Worldwide". www.wyndhamworldwide.com. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  14. "Wyndham Hotel Group Strengthens Its Midscale Bench with Acquisition of AmericInn - Wyndham Worldwide". www.wyndhamworldwide.com. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  15. "Wyndham's Trademark Hotel Collection Spans U.S. with Six New Additions - Wyndham Worldwide". wyndhamworldwide.com. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  16. "Wyndham Hotel Group Inks Deal with American Hotel Income Properties for 46 Hotels Across U.S. - Wyndham Worldwide". www.wyndhamworldwide.com. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  17. {Wyndham Worldwide May 31, 2018, 7:00pm press release
  18. Trejos, Nancy (9 April 2018). "The brands and hotel rooms of Wyndham Hotel Group, by the numbers". USA Today. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  19. "Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Our Brands". Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  20. "Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc" (PDF). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. February 14, 2019. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  21. "Super8 Owners Form Association". www.hotel-online.com. 2008-03-30. Retrieved 2008-05-04.
  22. "Wyndham appreciates the role of Asian Indian Hotel Owners". Hotel Vikas. 2009-01-30. Archived from the original on February 21, 2009. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  23. Percival IV, Lynn C.; Poyner Spruill LLP (8 April 2014). "New Jersey Federal Court Rejects Wyndham's Challenge to Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Data-Security Enforcement Authority". The National Law Review. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
  24. "Wyndham buys Shell Vacations for $102M in cash". www.businessweek.com/. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
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