We own at OKW, and recently sold our SSR contract to buy Wyndham points at Great Smoky Mountains.
Worldmark and Wyndham are both owned by Wyndham, but are very different resort systems. Worldmark is very strong out west and Wyndham is stronger in the east and in Hawaii, although they are expanding rapidly in the west.
What we like about Wyndham is far more choices than we have with DVC (82 resorts if I counted correctly - something over 120 if you count affiliates), much lower costs, and far greater exchange availability (6,500+ RCI resorts vs 600 with DVC because we get a free full RCI membership with Wyndham). We also enjoy direct online booking for both Wyndham and affiliated resorts, and also direct online booking with RCI.
Costs: We bought a 501,000 point contract on eBay for less than $2,000 total including all costs. The contract came with some current year points which we deposited into RCI, and also with some "banked" points (called "credit pooling" in the Wyndham system). You can buy small Wyndham contracts on eBay for $1, and in some cases the seller will pay the closing costs. Larger contracts are more, but nothing like buying either DVC or Wyndham direct.
There is no conversion between the points systems, so you just have to try to compare accommodations to accommodations (which is approximate on its best day). The two most recent comparisons I've done were between a stay at OKW at our cost per point vs Wyndham Bonnet Creek and Aulani, DVC/RCI, and Wyndham's Waikiki Beach Walk.
OKW, at our $7 per point rough estimate would have cost us about $189 per night (27 points) for a one bedroom Sun-Thurs. Our cost for Wyndham for the same dates ($5.20 per 1000 points X 9) made our cost for Bonnet Creek just under $47 per night. Obviously, OKW would enjoy the onsite perks, but both have good bus systems and are virtually the same driving distances to anywhere we'd want to go.
Looking at Hawaii, for a week in a one-bedroom, I got the following costs:
- Aulani, Island View = $2,254 or $322 per night at our $7 cost
- Wyndham Waikiki Beach Walk, 1 BR Deluxe (comparable to a DVC one-bedroom), lower floor = $1,385 or $198 per night
- DVC/RCI would be 160 points = $1,120 or $160 per night at our $7 cost...but of course we don't know what availability would be, if any.
- I didn't check RCI through Wyndham
That's not an apples to apples comparison. Aulani is obviously beachfront and Wyndham is across the street from the beach. But both are on Oahu, which would not be in my first three choices of islands anyway, and Aulani is in an area of Oahu that I wouldn't choose ordinarily.
Cons of Wyndham:
Their
sales practices are probably not the worst in the entire timeshare industry, but it's not from lack of trying. They're pretty sleazy. But, as hard as they try, they can't force anyone to attend an "owner update."
It's a
new system to learn...and it's more than just terminology. Knowing DVC makes it easier to understand Wyndham, but the aspects of the systems like exchanging, banking, borrowing, etc work somewhat differently.
Some count the
small transaction fees as an annoyance, but I personally like them because allocating costs to each transaction more accurately and fairly spreads the costs IMHO. A person who makes/changes reservations 20 times a year should pay more than a person who only does 3 bookings.
Also,
bigger contracts (which we own)
pay lower dues per point than smaller contracts. Since there is a base administrative cost to every contract, that would be one change DVC might make in the future that many would absolutely hate, but we would approve. Currently all DVC owners are subsidizing the dues of the small contracts which have proliferated greatly in the last few years.
Wyndham is
weak out west, but getting better rapidly.