Although it turns out that the proposed devaluation of HH points don’t effect my future booking method that much (maybe we jumped to a conclusion that turns out that the effects are not that significant because the list of hotels changing categories looks different as a simple one category up move), I utilized this thread to an opportunity to evaluate the value of my memberships in various FGPs at year end.

Thanks to this controversial discussion in this 200+ post, I got not only a much broader knowledge but also it confirms my opinion, that the personal situation is the main driver for arguing in either side.

Let me sum up, what I discovered:

• In particular the pass to team up with AmEx and VISA in issuing co-branded Credit Cards shifted HHonors focus from (costly) marketing efforts to encourage customer to book their hotel stay at Hilton.com to show profit at Hilton's balance sheet by aggressively selling HHonors points. While I don’t support CC issuers business model to gain their profit mainly from 15.24% APR and up, members who pay their debt on time benefit as long as its last.
• Members who get their stays paid by government/corporation/small business and have the discretion to decide where to stay and how to pay earn incentives for free. Critics call this a modern form of kick back.
• Members who are traveling for personal reasons and on their own dime are limited in their ability to take advantage of a price differential between cash and points. IMO for this group it’s essential to have a deeper look into the benefits of HHonors otherwise they get overcharged.

For the latter, here are same arguments to consider:

• If nobody else pays for my stay, funds come either out of my pocket or out of my FGP account. Therefore I would compare prices and offers from multiple merchants and extend my shopping channels to sites that include opaque travel inventory sold at PL and HW (there is reason why BGR does not apply!).
• If have banked more than 200K HH points in your account, have a look where you like to go, shop for rates and search for (recent) successful (non-refundable) bids at PL (until recently FT member coolwulf offered bidding assistance here for free and for a small fee at his/her website, but decided to temporarily close to avoid any possible violation of PLs T&C). Than do your math’s and if you decide to redeem points and still like to calculate the value of your HH points, don’t forget that you surrender your earning potentials!