Pretty much every hotel chain other than Starwood offers a Mastercard or VISA affinity card, and many are free. See, for example, see post 5 in this thread in Other Credit Cards:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...rship-fee.html
However,
if the objective is to convert to airline miles, there is no hotel card other than SPG which is attractive, because hotel chains typically convert 5:1 to miles and you will not average 5 point per dollar with any hotel credit card.
Thanks. But are there any hotel cards where the Visa/MC is not a watered down product compared to the Amex version? I was seriously considering adding a Hilton card, but it looks like the Visa only offers 2 points/$ as opposed to the 3 points/$ on the Amex option. I'm not as concerned about an annual fee as I am about point earning capabilities. And I wouldn't need to use this card for converting to miles...rather just to build up points to use for times when SPG doesn't have hotel options at a particular destination. Ideally I'd just transfer 100k of annual spend to this card to build up a points reserve on a competing chain.