You're right. I inverted something. The actual minimum for me, based on $250/night x 7 nights for 150,000 points yields 1.17 cents/point.

The best deal is still for miles earned through the travel packages. Ignoring the 'cost' of the hotel certificate from the package, you end up using 120K points for 120K miles on your favorite airline.

The recent double points Visa promotion was excellent for accumulating a lot of points. With it, you could earn up to 26 points per dollar spent (10 + 10 + 3 Marriott Visa + 3 Platinum bonus). To earn 120K points under the promo you needed only spend ~$4600. This $4600 spend ends up yielding (thru a vacation package award) 120K miles.

Those 120K miles represent ~89% of the miles needed for a FC ticket to New Zealand on AA/Cathay which costs ~17K US dollars from the east coast. Those same miles sent to United are enough for the same award on UA/NZ which retails for about $12K dollars. Thus a $4600 spend with Marriott = 120K airline miles = up to $12-15K worth of airline tickets.