Geoff Ballotti travel tips

Take it from me, a former high school mock trial and literary magazine nerd who wasn't exactly the star of the football team: Unrequited love usually never works.

Wyndham‘s executives saw March 11 as a fresh start for their hotel franchising company – that was the day Choice Hotels abandoned its hostile merger bid.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts said on Tuesday it had created a new role, chief commercial officer, and had appointed its chief information and distribution officer, Scott Strickland, to fill it.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, February 16. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel.

Ever since Wyndham said ‘No’ to Choice Hotels’ offer last year to buy it, executives have been sandbagged by work related to preventing the hostile merger.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, lifestyle hotel maven Sam Nazarian and Grammy Award winner Marc Anthony doing anything together might sound like the beginning of a joke, and yet here we are with news that these unlikely bedfellows are launching a new lifestyle hotel brand.

On a third-quarter earnings call Thursday morning, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts outlined for investors its rationale for rejecting a $7.8 hostile takeover bid from budget-hospitality rival Choice Hotels. Including assumed debt, the deal value would climb to around $9.8 billion.

The battle of the budget hotel brands is moving to all-out war.

When Hilton first announced its economy brand Spark at the beginning of this year, hotel industry analysts buzzed over the potential blow that would have to Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Wyndham is the world's largest hotel company in terms of hotel count, and it's a major player in the economy and midscale hotel space with brands like La Quinta, Microtel and Days Inn.

Middle-income consumers paid premiums for hotel rooms as pent-up demand and savings boosted people’s taste for travel post-pandemic. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest hotel franchisor — whose brands mostly target these consumers — enjoyed quarter-after-quarter of room rate gains throughout 2022.