In January, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts announced plans to expand its upscale and lifestyle offerings through a new multihotel deal with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, bringing four Choctaw Casino & Resorts properties with nearly 2,000 rooms under the Wyndham umbrella. The Choctaw Nation will retain ownership and management of all four properties, with one—the flagship Choctaw Casino & Resort–Durant in Oklahoma—joining the Wyndham Grand brand and the other three joining Wyndham’s Trademark Collection.
Building a Partnership
The deal’s origins started years ago, according to Michael Grisar, senior director, resort operations, Choctaw Resorts. Upon assuming his role in 2022, he saw an opportunity to grow the Nation’s hospitality presence through a partnership with a larger company. “We do things really well, but we're always striving to find ways to do things better,” he said. “We want to be best in class in anything we do, and we want to ensure that our partners are best in class and have that [same] philosophy.”
To that end, Grisar reached out to several hotel companies, receiving a number of replies. “We were very honored and very humbled by the response—to have major global, known companies who wanted to participate and be part of the Choctaw Nation and to understand more of who we are,” he said.
Grisar’s first call was with Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti, who returned the call in less than three minutes. “We've known each other in the past, for a long time, and it was very easy to explain who we were,” Grisar recalled. And while he continued accepting requests for proposals and talking with other leaders, that first conversation had made an impact—and not just for Choctaw Resorts.
Wyndham “jumped at the opportunity” to work with the Nation, said Leo Danese, vice president, upscale and lifestyle brands, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “We mobilized a lot of the internal teams to aggregate all the information for that RFP process.” This, he added, was before they knew if the agreement would include gaming venues or just hotel rooms. “We didn't know what the odds would be,” he recalled. But despite the uncertainty inherent in such a deal, the Wyndham team relied on their existing relationships with members of the Choctaw Casino & Resorts team. “Hospitality is a small industry in a small world, so we relied [on] and leaned into a lot of those previous relationships,” he said. “And word of mouth travels quickly.”
“It was an extraordinary process that took time,” Grisar said. “We were very, very methodical to make sure that it went properly. And in the end, from a selection standpoint, I will say it was unanimous as to choosing Wyndham, because we felt the culture, the history, the pillars—everything aligned.”
Mutual Support, Mutual Benefits
Teams at both businesses saw advantages to an arrangement, especially as each sought ways to gain ground in both size and scale. Wyndham’s leadership was eager to take advantage of growing demand for experiential travel. “We're always trying to find more redemption opportunities for our loyalty [program] members,” Danese said. “What an amazing opportunity to redeem points here.”
The scale of the Wyndham Rewards program also appealed to the Choctaw team. Grisar acknowledged that the resorts do not sell out every night, but bringing them to 125 million Wyndham Rewards members could drive business, especially for people who might not know what the resorts offer.
Similarly, the focus on gaming had limited what kind of hospitality projects the Nation could develop, and what experiences the team could provide to different demographics. “We have great meeting space,” Grisar said. “Are we maximizing it? We saw that as an opportunity.” Similarly, the casino resorts were regularly packed on weekends, especially when concerts were scheduled for the performance venues. Weekday business, on the other hand, was often slower. “We're not just a casino,” he said. “We happen to be a beautiful resort that has gaming, has restaurants [and has meeting space. We want to use it all properly.”
The partnership took shape over the course of several years, and Danese said the teams delayed finalizing the terms “a couple of times” in order to make sure every detail was right. “We didn't just sign an agreement and then go on [with] our business,” he said, noting that Kirk Hart, Wyndham’s regional VP of operations for upscale & lifestyle brands, has been to the Durant property several times to meet with the team. “That support is constant and ongoing, and it is a two-way street,” he said. “When you succeed, we succeed.”
"It's not going to do us any good if we're the only successful end of the business,” Grisar agreed, noting that if the deal is beneficial for Wyndham as well, that will likely help the Choctaw team with their next project, especially as new partners come onboard. “While we are very regionally focused, we want to expand on that. How do we expand the regional footprint? How do we make more people aware that gets further through Texas, through Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas—and then again, to a national audience?”
The integration process has also been educational for the Wyndham team, Danese added, specifically in terms of technology. “That will help us down the road as we continue to get into the casino and gaming side of things, should more opportunities arise.”
An important part of the agreement was maintaining the Choctaw Nation identity across the assets. “We wanted to be able to keep that rich history that the Choctaw Nation has built over not only decades but centuries, and to know that we would be partnered with a global hospitality brand that would allow us to run the properties we still own—all of the buildings we still manage,” Grisar said. “We own all of the properties, we manage all of the properties. The team members all work for the Choctaw Nation—and yet now we have a global partnership with Wyndham.”
As part of that relationship, Wyndham associates at the Nation’s resorts are learning the Choctaw language to communicate with team members on property. “That's been really important here—to just listen, [to] understand each other, and then collaborate,” Danese said. “Hopefully, that'll set us up for success.”