Good morning everyone, happy Friday! A few months ago, I booked 6 nights in Kauai (4 in Princeville and 2 in Poipu) with Wyndham Rewards Points for stays at 2 different Vacasa vacation rentals (read My Experience Booking Vacasa Vacation Rentals with Wyndham Rewards Points). Since I have the Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card, I get a 10% discount on all awards stays, so the cost per night was 13,500 Wyndham Rewards Points (or 81,000 points total for 6 nights). In this post, I will share the good and bad experience I had with these 2 Vacasa vacation rentals.
We stayed 4 nights at the SeaLodge H6 in Princeville. I’m a sucker for ocean views, so as soon as I saw this photo, I knew I wanted to stay here. As you can see, the price per night varies greatly depending on the time of year and demand. One of the coolest things about Vacasa is the virtual tour that they do for every vacation rental. Click the Virtual Tour button to virtually walk through the property.
You can easily navigate around the entire vacation rental and there is also an option to see the floor plan. When we arrived, it was 99% the same as the virtual tour, just different color towels in the bathroom.
-
- Virtual Tour of Property
-
- Floor Plan of Property
A few days before arrival, Vacasa sent me this email with check in information, the address, parking details, and the wifi password. Everything was very helpful and accurate.
On the day of arrival, I received a second email from Vacasa with the weather forecast and the lockbox code. We arrived a few hours after check in time and were able to find the vacation rental, parking, and used the lockbox code to get the key to the front door.
When we entered the vacation rental, there was a nice box of chocolate covered macadamias and a handwritten welcome card from the housekeeping team.
Unfortunately, the property is a little dated and we noticed that the panel under the dishwasher was open. We tried to close it, but it would just pop open again. The dishwasher looked a little dated, so we decided not to use the dishwasher during our stay and hand wash our dishes instead. In the morning, I also noticed that one of the screens fell off and was resting on the ground.
On our first morning, I took photos and emailed the Kauai Vacasa. I told them about the 2 issues and said it wasn’t urgent, so they didn’t need to come fix them right away. After waiting 2 days without getting a response, I followed up with the Kauai Vacasa team on our third morning. I just wanted them to acknowledge the email and make sure that someone knew about the issue before we checked out (I didn’t want to get billed for any damages).
On the afternoon of our third day, I finally received a response. The Kauai Vacasa team would repair the issues are we checked out. Perfect, that is just what I wanted to hear.
Overall Thoughts
Princeville is a beautiful part of Kauai. It does rain several times a day for 2-3 minutes, which makes sense since it is the rainy side of the island. In March 2021, there was a big mudslide that washed out the road to the one lane bridge that goes over to Hanalei, so there is construction going on to fix the hillside. During construction, all traffic from 1 direction goes for 30 minutes. Then traffic is stopped and the other direction goes for 30 minutes. You will probably end up waiting 30 minutes to cross the bridge in either or both directions. Most of the activities we booked were near Lihue (airport), so we ended up driving 40-60 minutes from Princeville to Lihue most days. It is a beautiful drive, but you might get stuck in traffic, so make sure to add extra time to the commute. Lastly, the views were million dollar views, but the property was a little dated. I wish I had done virtual tours of several Princeville Vacasa vacation rentals, since I might have selected a different property that was newer.
After checking out of our Princeville Vacasa vacation rental at 10am, we had a few hours to kill until our 4pm check in at the Manualoha 302 in Poipu for 2 nights. This place was gorgeous and was a 5 minute walk to Brennecke’s Beach and a 10 minute walk to Poipu Beach. There was also a great community pool that was 1 minute away with great ocean front views. Click the Virtual Tour button to virtually walk through the property.
This property is very modern and had 2 bathrooms, an updated kitchen, and a big living room. It was definitely big enough for a 3-4 person family.
-
- Virtual Tour of Property
-
- Floor Plan of Property
A few days before arrival, Vacasa sent me this email with check in information, the address, parking details, and the wifi password. Everything was very helpful and accurate.
On the day of arrival, I received a second email from Vacasa with the weather forecast and the keypad code. We arrived an hour before check in time and everything was ready for our stay. It was very easy to find the property and there was tons of parking spots available throughout our stay.
Overall Thoughts
This place thought of everything. They had several beach towels, beach chairs, beach toys, boogie boards, and more. We were very sad to leave after only 2 nights. We both agreed we would rather have stayed in Princeville for 2 nights and Poipu for 4 nights. If you have kids and love going to the pool and the beach, this is the place to stay. Poipu is on the dry side of the island, so it doesn’t rain nearly as much. Most of the activity we did on Kauai were only a 20-30 minute drive away, so the location would have been better for us too.
General Vacasa Thoughts
My overall thoughts are that Vacasa vacation rentals are awesome, but make sure to do your due diligence on the location and quality of the property before booking. The price of 13,500 Wyndham Rewards Points per bedroom per night is such a steal, so I’m not sure how long those low prices will last. If you have your heart set on booking a Vacasa vacation rental, I would recommend locking in the price and reservation soon. Laura and I are looking forward to our next Vacasa vacation rental, but we haven’t decided where to go yet. If you have any questions about Vacasa vacation rentals, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
P.S. If you want to read a second opinion on Vacasa vacation rentals, check out this Frequent Miler post: The Greenbrier Pigeon Forge Vacasa rental via Wyndham Rewards. Bottom line review.
Hi Grant – Thanks for this interesting post. You got absolutely incredible value for Wyndham Rewards points using Vacasa! It sounds like a great trip, and you can use what you learned the next time you guys take a getaway to Kauai :)
I’ll also share my own recent experience in hopes that will further help TWG readers get great value from the Wyndham Rewards-Vacasa partnership:
I followed your advice from your earlier post to make a Vacasa booking using WR points on Whidbey Island near Seattle. We were booking kind of last-minute, so the inventory was pretty picked-over and prices were on the high end. That made it all the sweeter when we found a 1-bedroom place for around $340/night list price that we were able to book for 13,500 WR points/night (like you, I have the Wyndham Earner biz card for the 10% discount). The place looks nice, and importantly, it sleeps 4 with a sofa bed in the living room, which we need for this trip to visit our daughter. All-in paid rate for this rental including fees & taxes would have been about $885. That gave us a rate of 3.28 cpp for our WR points – same range as your great deals in Kauai. We’re really looking forward to the upcoming trip and some time with our daughter in what should be a beautiful, relaxing location – with an incredible points deal to boot!
Back to the booking process, it worked just as you said. I used email to communicate with the rewards booking team, at the address you provided. They were quick to respond during business hours. I sent them an email on Sunday night, and they responded at 7:21 am Central time on Monday morning. When I wrote back on Monday afternoon to confirm the booking, they responded with confirmation in about 1 hour, 15 minutes. The only issue with the process was the anxiety of waiting for them to respond, when I knew that the area was in-demand and there were basically no other properties in the area that would have suited our needs. Also note that the booking was non-refundable, so if we can’t make it for some reason, we’re out of luck (it would have been cancellable up to 30 days before the reservation date, but we were already booking less than 30 days in advance of our stay).
As always, I really appreciate all that you do to write about interesting topics in the points, miles & travel area and provide great advice! ~Craig
Hi Craig, I’m very glad you enjoyed reading this post and that you used the information from earlier posts to book your upcoming Vacasa stay on Whidbey Island. If you arrive before the standard 4pm check in time, I would just show up and see if the vacation rental is ready for you. If no one stayed there the night before, the place might have been cleaned a day or more before your arrival, so no need to wait until 4pm. Take a good look at the virtual tour and layout and you should exactly where everything is when you arrive. Have a great time :)