Originally Posted by
gleff
While Hilton properties are ubiquitous, for my tastes they don't have as many 'nice' properties as Starwood -- hotels that I actually want to redeem my points to be at. I value Starwood points more highly just because I prefer luxury hotel redemptions, and there aren't as many comparable properties in the Hilton portfolio. Moreover, Starwood points have far greater value when rransferred into airline miles.
But I fully intend to hit the $40,000 spending threshold on the Hilton American Express Surpass card in order to add Hilton Diamond to my travel wallet, for those times I do wind up staying at Hiltons.
Whether or not this makes sense as your primary card really depends on your travel and redemption habits -- if you need hotels everywhere, then Hilton may be for you, and if you're happy with Hilton hotels for your award stays then this is a great option. But if you want to transfer points to miles, or if you want high-end luxury stays, then it may not be.
(Note of course that I am not saying there aren't luxurious Hiltons. There are several nice Waldorf and Conrad properties of course. But even some of those don't compare to the top end of other chains, and and those make up a relatively small proportion of Hilton's offerings.)
The caveat of course for the so called high end SPG properties for redemption purposes is that they are A LOT more expensive than high end Hilton HHonors properties which you did not mention but I feel is very important to point out. The most famous example is Conrad Maldives vs. W Maldives. The cost to redeem awards at W Maldives is estimated to be about
500%~600% that of redeeming points at Conrad Maldives. Would you seriously pay for 5 or 6 times more of your hard earned points for those highe end SPG properties? I'd certainly think twice, wouldn't you? For the most part, the Cat. 6 and 7 SPG properties are outrageously priced for redemption purposes. Sure, most of them are very nice, I'd agree it's better than most of the high end Hilton, Conrad and comparable to Waldorf Astoria properties. But with award cost capped at about 175K points for 6 nights, which is roughly equivalent to just less than 10K SPG points per night, woud you pay more than double such as 20K or 25K
minimum (in many cases, the redemption costs double for all-suite properties and more due to high season rate) to stay at those SPG properties? Therefore, the fairer way to compare between the two hotel chains is you should not compare Cat. 6 & 7 SPG hotels to Cat. 6 HHonors properties because the cost is drastically different. When you limit the comparison to Cat. 5 SPG to Cat. 6 HHonors, then you'll see the comparison is much more fair, both in terms of comparability of the properties themselves and the cost of award. Anyone who redeem their points for Cat. 6 & 7 SPG points will quickly notice their return per $ is actually very low in most cases, often well below what they would be willing to buy SPG points at.