Making Sense of the Wyndham Destinations-Travel + Leisure Deal
Photo Credit: Wyndham Destinations wants to grow into a multifaceted travel platform beyond its typical resorts (pictured: Club Wyndham Smoky Mountains). Wyndham Destinations
Skift Take
Wyndham Destinations wants to be more than just a timeshare company. Clearly, its $100 million Travel + Leisure acquisition may pave the path to realizing that vision.
Wyndham Destinations’ $100 million acquisition of the Travel + Leisure media brand may have been a head-scratcher for some in both the travel and media industries.
But the vacation rental and timeshare company’s chief executive says the move is all about broadening the scope of its evolving business.
“Our objective here is to create not nightly stays or whole [timeshare] ownership but [build on] that huge gap between where people want to travel with a name they trust,” said Wyndham Destinations CEO Michael Brown Wednesday in an interview with Skift hours after the deal was announced. “They trust Travel + Leisure, and we already have the mechanism in place.”
The Wyndham Destinations leadership team worked in recent years to change the perception of the company’s timeshare roots, a sector historically seen as attracting older clientele who have a set time of year to visit one vacation home or condo. Wyndham Destinations, which spun out from Wyndham Hotels &
