Only you can really decide the value of hotels vs. air miles. I will say that star often provides availability when other miles have nothing available. That was the case with our greece trip this summer. DL and AA miles got me no where so it was good that I had star.

I will also say that I can not believe how bad US is at booking tickets. I just booked the simplest award and it was so much hassle. I just wanted to fly a simple roundtrip between newark and houston on continental. I had everything possible go wrong. Agents insisting that CO flight was not available even though it was. Dropped calls after 20 minutes. After 30 minutes agent tells me that computer is down and I need to ticket it. Then agent goes to ticket on next call then tells me my CC is not going through. 20 minutes on hold later they come back and tell me that it was a problem on there end and they have fixed it.

In all it took me 5 calls and over 2 hours to book a RT from EWR-IAH. So much hassle I am not sure its worth it.