Originally Posted by
VA1379
Your numbers seem a bit off to me. Isn't the platinum (and gold) elite bonus for SPG 50 %? For Hyatt, the diamond bonus is 30 % or 1.5 points per dollar. Starwood and Marriott give 500 point platinum bonus welcome gifts at FS properties. Marriott gives 200 points for limited service properties, except for CYs outside of the USA where they give 250. Hyatt gives 1000 for diamond members only in North American FS properties, 500 for limited service properties.
I could be wrong, but I think the 2 Hyatt properties in Paris (not including the one at CDG) require 18,000 points per night. So your comparison would require 90,000 points for a 5 night stay.
I believe you're right on all of those, Hilton is my main program so I was going from memory on some of it and some is just bad math in my head on my part, I'm going to fix my original post instead of reposting.
Originally Posted by
VA1379
Starwood and Marriott have packages that let you redeem points for rooms and airline miles at attractive rates. I still think the Marriott travel packages are one of the best deals around if you earn enough points (since you can transfer one Marriott point to one mile in 50-120k increments for US and a few foreign carriers).
I have little to no interest in converting hotel points to airline miles, others think differently obviously. Of course with Hilton I get miles with every stay anyway.
Edited again to add one more thing: In terms of intangibles, I think the ability to Diamond Force an award with Hilton is a huge benefit that I don't believe any other chain matches.