How I leveraged a casino partnership to extend expiring hotel points

02.06.2024 - 21:29 / thepointsguy.com

Points and miles have value, so I watch when and how rewards expire in the programs I use. It's easy to prevent points and miles from expiring in programs that require periodic account activity, but there's usually no way to extend rewards that lose their value a set time after they were earned.

I received an email from AwardWallet on May 1 informing me that 8,500 of my Wyndham Rewards points would expire May 31. I looked at my upcoming travel schedule to see whether there were any upcoming stays I wanted to book using Wyndham points, but I ended up using Wyndham's partnership with Caesars to reset the expiration date on my points. Here's how I did it.

According to the Wyndham Rewards' terms and conditions, Wyndham Rewards points expire four years from the checkout date of the stay during which the points were earned.

However, you'll also lose your points if you don't have any account activity for 18 consecutive months. Account activity is defined as "any (i) point earning, (ii) stay posted to a Member's Wyndham Rewards account, regardless of whether or not such stay earns Wyndham Rewards points, and (iii) redemption or transfer activity involving a change in the Member's Wyndham Rewards point balance."

Finally, Wyndham may close your account if you have not had any account activity for at least 60 consecutive months.

Related: The 12 best Wyndham hotels in the world

You can only see the last 18 months of your account activity when logged into your account on the Wyndham website. However, you may see when your Wyndham points expire by navigating to the My Account page and scrolling down.

On the left-hand side of the page, you might see a notification about when your points will expire. Here are examples of what this notification looked like May 11 before I took any action and May 30 after I'd used the soon-to-expire points.

The blank in the first screenshot from May 11 isn't helpful. I've also periodically logged into my Wyndham account and found this notification missing. So, although the notice is useful when it's present and complete, I recommend setting a reminder in your calendar about a month ahead of the soonest of these two expiration dates. Alternatively, you could use a tool like AwardWallet that will alert you before your points expire.

Related: Wyndham adds 9 all-inclusive resorts with bargain award redemption rates

Once I realized I had 8,500 Wyndham points that would expire May 31 and couldn't be extended with account activity, I checked my upcoming destinations for any appealing uses of Wyndham points. Award nights start at just 7,500 points, though you get a 10% discount if you have certain Wyndham credit cards. I recently added the Wyndham Rewards Earner® Business Card to my