Wyndham Worldwide Partners with PGA Tour

The historic golfing tradition of the Greater Greensboro Open — a professional tournament that has been in place nearly 70 years — has officially become the Wyndham Championship, effective with the 2007 playing season.

According to Stephen P. Holmes, chairman, president and CEO of Wyndham Worldwide, as quoted in the Greensboro News-Record (www.news-record.com), Wyndham is excited about the sponsorship because many of the people who buy a Fairfield resort timeshare or a Trendwest timeshare (both part of the Wyndham Worldwide brand) are from the Greensboro and Raleigh Durham area of North Carolina. As Holmes explained, “this is a large market for our customers.”

Wyndham Vacation Ownership, as a timeshare company, is the world’s largest vacation ownership business. Through their two primary timeshare company brands, Fairfield Resort timeshare and Trendwest Timeshare, Wyndham Worldwide has developed or acquired more than 140 vacation ownership or timeshare promotion properties with over 18,000 individual timeshare condo units.

The Wyndham Worldwide brand includes Wyndham Vacation Ownership, a timeshare company involved in timeshare promotion for Fairfield Resort Timeshare and Trendwest Timeshare. It also includes the Wyndham Hotel Group and the RCI Global Vacation Network Group. The RCI Global Vacation Network is the world’s largest timeshare condo exchange network and is one of the world’s largest global marketers of vacation properties for rental or timeshare promotion.

The 2007 Wyndham Championship will be part of the PGA Tour’s Fed-Ex Cup schedule, which is itself a new departure for US professional golf. While all of the fine points have yet to be established, the Fed-Ex Cup is patterned loosely after NASCAR’s Nextel Cup, which allows the top 10 drivers to compete for the cup in a 10-race series. Until this year, a PGA Tour member’s status to play the following year was determined almost entirely upon dollars won in each tournament played.