I was primarily thinking of the airline mileage equivalent via "Point Exchange," as Hilton calls it. The ratio of points to miles on most airlines is 1:1 for Starwood but 5:1 for Hilton. In other words, a Hilton point is worth approximately 20% of a Starwood point. (I recognize, however, that you can do better redeeming an airline award directly with Hilton, so that is a gross oversimplification.)

There is nothing inherently good or bad about a "strong" or "weak" hotel point "currency." It's just something to be aware of.

If you look at the number of points required for free hotel nights, except at the bottom end, the ratio is not as low as 20%, depending on what award you want. More like 30%, narrowing at the high end properties:

http://www.starwood.com/preferredgue...rd_search.html

http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rew...jhtml#standard

So it depends how you plan to spend your points.

I have minimal hotel stay experience compared to you. The Starwood board explains all of this much better than I could.

There is a particularly lucrative "Gold Referral" program going on now. If you can get referred and stay 5 times by the end of October, you'd get a 5K bonus, plus 2.5K for booking the five stays online, plus 3 points (includes 50% Gold bonus) per dollar spent.

Check it out on the Starwood forum, searching for "Gold referral."