Wyndham Vacation Rentals launches new site and starts to rebrand

There's been no big press blitz, but Wyndham quietly soft-launched a new vacation rental website for North America and is rebranding that part of its business.

The Wyndham Vacation Rentals brand and site replace a couple of dozen sites branded ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals. The potpourri of ResortQuest sites will be retired by the end of July.

There is still some ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals branding on the new site, but it is being downplayed.

Wyndham acquired ResortQuest for $54 million in cash in September 2010.

The new website, WyndhamVacationRentals.com, has a modern "look and feel" and it offers improved search functionality.

The new site enables guests to input promo codes online and has other new features, including "Push 2 Talk" and "Push 2 Chat."

And, there are verified vacation rental reviews from previous Wyndham guests.

ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals, as the division is still officially known, has about 6,000 professionally managed properties in resort destinations across the U.S.

One attractive new twist to the site is a "Similar Properties in Close Proximity" feature, enticing guests to book a comparable nearby vacation rental if the first one they looked at doesn't meet their needs.

This technique was pioneered by Amazon; Booking.com does something similar with its "Customers who viewed ... also viewed" feature for hotels.

In contrast to the new WyndhamVacationRentals.com, here's the look of the homepage of the soon-to-be retired ResortQuest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals Northwest Florida site.

In tandem with the soft launch, Wyndham Vacation Rentals also debuted a mobile site, with ecommerce capabilities to come.