Wyndham Hotels Has Major Losses, But Hands $2 Million To Justin Thomas

This week’s Wyndham Championship presents us with a classic study in corporate irresponsibility.

The hotel conglomerate is forking over $6.4 million to attach its name to this week’s final stop on the PGA Tour’s regular season schedule.  On top of that, the folks in the finance department wired $2,000,000 into the already fat banking account of Justin Thomas.  That might be somewhat tolerable if J.T. had bothered to show up this week and support the company that cut him that bloated check.

Earlier this year, the corporately responsible folks at John Deere politely advised PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan (aka The Sheriff Of Nottingham), that it wouldn’t be right for the company to fork out millions to PGA Tour millionaires then try and justify that to the hundreds of employees that were laid off.

Consider also, that unlike John Deere, Wyndham has taken some huge losses lately.

In the second quarter alone, Wyndham hotels reported losses of $174 million.

Ouch.

In addition to J.T.’s $2,000,000 bonanza, Wyndham forked out another eight million in its “Wyndham Rewards.”  Gotta give The Sheriff Of Nottingham a lot of credit — this was corporate fleecing at it’s finest.  Rob from the corporate rich and give to the golfing rich.  Nice if you can get it.

Try and justify that to the nearly half of 2,500 Wyndham corporate staff worldwide that was laid off or took a pay reduction.  

That measure caused Wyndham to incur pretax charges of approximately $15 million to $18 million in connection with that action.

Wyndham President/CEO Geoffrey Ballotti took one for the team and agreed to forgo 100 percent of his 2020 base compensation, effective last April 1.

Tom Barber, the Global Chief Development Officer for the company was let go on April 1.  No fooling.

Which brings us back to Greensboro, Sedgefield Country Club and the $16.4 million Wyndham spent — $6.4 million spread out to pay the guys who make the cut this week and that $10 million “Rewards” pool that was supposed to be for a full year’s work, although a bunch of tournaments were cancelled.

One would think that Mr. Ballotti would have made a call to The Sheriff Of Nottingham (aka PGA Tour commish Jay Monahan) and simply said:  “Hey Jay, we need to pro-rate the “Rewards.”

But no, the cash got thrown around like the hotel business is in great shape.  It’s just the opposite.  Ye olde COVID-19 has that industry sucking wind in a big way.

While we’re on the subject of responsibility, wouldn’t you think J.T. might have made an appearance in Greensboro?  Hey, just consider it an appearance fee —  a fat two million, about a million more than this week’s winner will earn for four days of intense competition.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

At least the folks at John Deere were responsible enough to call it off.  Their dealers were on board, so were the rest of the vendors and corporate partners of John Deere.

As for Wyndham, there’s no telling how long it will be before the hotel industry recovers.

Those Florida unemployment numbers?  Check and see how many hotel employees are on the street.  That’s an easy one — a bunch.

Here’s a thought — how responsible would it be for Justin Thomas to donate that $2 million to Greensboro area charities?

No, that would be just too good to be true.

Wouldn’t it?

Editor’s Note: Wyndham Hotels announced this week that it will borrow another $350 million.