Wyndham Rewards Earner® Business Card review: Best of both worlds for business owners?

If you’re more likely to stay the night at a Hilton hotel than a Wyndham property, choosing something like the Hilton Honors Amex Surpass card is a no-brainer. It immediately outpaces the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business with its offering of premium airport lounge access and statement credits for a CLEAR Plus membership (subject to auto-renewal). 

The Hilton Honors Amex Surpass does have a higher annual fee and Hilton Honors points value is less than Wyndham Rewards points, coming in with an estimated value of only 0.6 cents per point compared to Wyndham’s estimated value of 0.9 cents per point. However, the Hilton Honors Amex Surpass’ welcome offer still greatly surpasses the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business welcome offer value. In exchange for spending $3,000 in six months of card membership with the Hilton Honors Amex Surpass, you could earn 130,000 points — a whopping $780 in value compared to the $405 value you get from the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business’ welcome offer. 

The greatest downside of the Hilton Honors Amex Surpass is its complete lack of business-specific rewards and perks. This card is much more travel-forward in its offerings, while the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business mixes both travel and business benefits. Ultimately your decision between the two could come down to a few things, starting with which properties you visit more often. Then you’ll need to decide if you’d want to sacrifice business perks for a more travel-focused card.

Business owners with bigger budgets might get the most out of a card like the Ink Business Preferred. Unlike the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business, the Ink Business Preferred isn’t tied to one particular brand, immediately making it more versatile in terms of redemption options and earning structure. You’d also earn Chase Ultimate Rewards, one of the most popular rewards programs available. And you won’t have to sacrifice business perks in exchange for better travel benefits with the Ink Business Preferred.

For the same annual fee as the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business, the Ink Business Preferred gives you the chance to earn a welcome offer worth up to $2,000, depending on how you redeem. Just keep in mind that there’s a steep spending requirement to match. It also gives you a competitive earning rate on both travel and select business categories, in addition to highly coveted travel insurance protections, which the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business doesn’t have. 

That said, the Ink Business Preferred is definitely geared towards business owners with bigger budgets. If you’re a smaller business or would like to keep things more cost-effective, the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business may be the way to go. Of course, if you have brand loyalty to Wyndham, the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business becomes hard to beat.

The Discover it® Miles would be a good additional card for earning miles if you want to go the travel-focused route. You’ll earn unlimited 1.5X miles for all purchases and Discover will automatically match the miles you’ve earned at the end of your first year. Best of all, there’s no annual fee and a decent intro APR on purchases, giving you some room to save on interest where the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business doesn’t.

For more rewards as a business owner, a card that offers unlimited cash back on all purchases is another great option, covering any purchase categories that the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business misses. The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card boasts 1.5 percent cash back, no annual fee and an intro APR on purchases.

The card’s accessible welcome offer and immediate access to such a high status in the Wyndham Rewards program makes it the most ideal for a small business owner with a moderate budget and a strong tie to the Wyndham brand.

If you travel frequently, especially by car, you could get a lot out of this card thanks to the generous rewards rate on gas purchases. Pair that with frequent stays across over 9,000+ Wyndham properties and you have a solid match.

The annual fee is fairly low compared to other hotel and business rewards cards. And for such a cost-effective card, you still benefit from competitive rewards on both travel and business purchases. You’ll also get a lucrative annual bonus on your card anniversary that has a value that easily covers the cost of the card’s annual fee.

The best business cards offer rewards in key business spending categories, so a primary factor in a business card’s rating is its rewards value. This includes the card’s average rewards rate, estimated annual rewards earnings, sign-up bonus value and reward redemption value.

To estimate a business card’s average annual rewards earnings, we first calculate its average rewards rate based on how much it earns in different bonus categories and how closely its categories align with the average small-business owner’s spending habits. In other words, we assess whether the card earns rewards at a high rate in the most popular business spending categories. 

We researched 10 key business spending categories including dining, gas, office supplies, travel, telecommunications, insurance and more to get a sense of the average small-business owner’s spending habits. We assumed an average annual spend of around $40,000 per year based on Bankrate survey data. 

Using this data, we are able to assign a weighting to each of a card’s bonus categories. We also estimate the redemption value of points or miles from various issuer, airline and hotel rewards programs.

This weighting and rewards valuation allows us to estimate a card’s average annual rewards earnings — how many points or miles you’d earn with a given card if your spending was about average and you used the card for all of your business purchases — as well as what those points are worth. We also use point valuations to determine a card’s sign-up bonus value.

With these calculations complete, we assign each card a score based on how its average rewards earnings, sign-up bonus value, rewards rate and redemption value stack up against other business cards, factoring in the card’s annual fee.

The better these values, the higher its score will be, making it more worthy of inclusion in our list and increasing its potential ranking.

We also score business cards based on how much it costs to keep them in your wallet or carry a balance. 

To start, each business card is scored based on whether it offers an intro APR and how its ongoing APR compares to the rates available on other business cards. This is because an intro APR on new purchases or balance transfers can be a lifesaver if you need to pay down debt, finance a large business purchase or free up cash flow. 

While intro APRs are not uncommon on business cards, they aren’t a given, so cards that offer this sort of payment flexibility will score higher in our card rating system.

Even more important to both a card’s score and its inclusion in our list, however, is how its annual fee influences its overall value. We consider a card’s annual fee in two ways — how it ranks relative to the fees you’ll find on other cards in the category and how it impacts a card’s overall rewards value. 

Cards with an annual fee will always be at a slight disadvantage in our scoring system since annual fees inherently cut into your rewards value. However, if a card offers terrific value via its ongoing rewards and perks, it can earn a high score and a spot in our list even if it carries a high annual fee. 

With this in mind, we rate a card based primarily on how its ongoing rewards value and ongoing perk value (such as annual credits or bonuses) stack up against those of other cards in the category when you subtract annual fees.

We rate each business card’s flexibility based on the restrictions it imposes on earning and redeeming rewards. 

Flexibility factors include whether a card only allows you to earn a high rewards rate on only a small amount of spending or requires you to meet a certain earning threshold before you can redeem rewards. We also examine whether your points are worth less when you opt for some redemption options over others and whether a card gives you the flexibility to transfer rewards to travel partners. 

We also score each card’s set of features – its perks and benefits — against five tiers of features to provide a rating. Top-tier perks include benefits like airport lounge access, travel credits, elite status with an airline or hotel and credits for expedited security screening membership programs.

We give extra weight to perks especially useful or valuable for small-business owners, like being able to qualify with no personal guarantee, digital advertising credits, free employee cards and accounting perks.

Cardholders can redeem points earned for a discounted night at any of Wyndham’s 9,000+ international locations. For other traveling expenses, you can use points toward gift cards, shopping or airline transfers.

Wyndham Hotels have a “go free” redemption option that gives members a free night at a participating hotel. You can redeem 7,500 to 30,000 points for a night or 15,000 to 30,000 points per bedroom at participating resorts and vacation rentals. Cardholders also receive a 10 percent redemption discount for redeeming “go free” awards.

The Wyndham Rewards Earner Business card application requires your business’ legal name, structure, number of employees, annual revenue, years in business, and other business-related information.