Originally Posted by rytrom
Hi all,
What program do you think is better - Marriott Rewards vs. Hilton Honnors? I want to consider all possible aspects:
- points cost (earned per dollar/spent per free night);
You'll have to do this assessment on your own: it varies too widely depending on where you do your paid stays and what kind of awards you want. A frequent Residence Inn guest will have very different numbers from a frequent full-service Marriott/Renaissance guest. Someone seeking 250,000-point travel packages will have a very different ROI perspective than someone just looking to quickly earn a couple of free nights for a weekend getaway.
By and large, the two programs are in the same ballpark in terms of overall rewards per dollar spent, IMHO.
- points earned per stay (only X points/dollar or additional promotions);
Varies by brand with Marriott, varies by your profile settings for HHonors. Run the numbers based on your own stay pattern and preferences...all of the information is available online. The good news is that in whichever program you pick, you get Silver status with the credit card, so factor that in from Stay #1.
- points earned from affiliated credit cards (paying for staying in the hotel and for regular payments outside)
MR Visa is weak as a primary-spend card. HH Amex is pretty good - just a tad bit weaker than SPG Amex.
- availability of rooms for award points;
Varies widely. YMMV. I've had reasonably good luck with both programs, but when I've done major awards (Hawaii, etc.) I've worked around airline award availability first. So by default I'm not trying to get rooms at max-peak seasons in most cases.
- upgrades and occasional promotions;
They are similar: both give me nice rooms as a Gold. C-level, corner rooms, ocean views, "junior suites", that kind of thing.
Neither of them give me true suites except on extremely rare and unpredictable occasions.
I'm a dimond in Hilton but this year will have to stay a lot in Waldorf (Germany) where there is no Hilton. So I have no other choice but to use Marriot at least for those nights. The question is should I switch to Marriot completelly or not. It's hard to collect in two banks:-)
I actively collect in two banks - Marriott (by staying at the hotels) and SPG (via the Amex) - and I know I can easily raise more HH points when I need 'em from my air miles. I do this by design: I want the diversity to help out when awards are tough to find, plus SPG has the added bonus that you can use small amounts of points for weekend stays without taking a bit value hit vs. the return you'd get on a big 5-nighter at a high-end property.
So...whether to cut over cold turkey kind of depends on what level at Marriott that would yield. Based on what others say about HH Diamond, I probably wouldn't want to give that up. It probably depends on how many nights you plan to do and how important the specific Diamond perks are to you. (You can always keep HH Gold simply by doing some spending on the Amex.) The only thing that sucks about Marriott is you have to do 50 nights as a Silver: while they've made Silver the giveaway level, there isn't any intermediate ground in there at 20-30 nights where you bump up.