Wyndham Ups Feeding Frenzy to Flip Brands of Existing Hotels
Photo Credit: The Wyndham Noblesville (pictured) in Indiana was part of Wyndham's most recent three-hotel conversion deal. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts / Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
Skift Take
Who needs to break ground on a new hotel when you can just woo a few existing properties away from the competition?
A growth strategy Wyndham laid out early in the pandemic is paying off.
A trio of recent hotel deals in the Midwest may not seem like much for the roughly 9,000-hotel Wyndham Hotels & Resorts portfolio, but the signing represented 100 percent conversion growth in the U.S. from the third quarter in 2019 to the third quarter of 2021. Conversions are a type of deal where the owner of an existing hotel takes on a new brand affiliation.
Michele Allen, Wyndham’s chief financial officer, said on an investor call two months into the pandemic the company was “igniting our conversion engine” to fuel growth through the downturn. That's largely because construction financing for new hotels dried up in light of decimated performance during the health crisis. In this instance, hotel owner Ceres Development swapped brand affiliation with Choice Hotels’s Cambria to Wyndham's namesake brand at two hotels in Indiana and one in Ohio.
It won’t be the l
