Back when I was a road warrior(not anymore, tho), I travelled enough to make the top levels in HH, HY, MH. Required some planning, as listed above, to maximize 'stays' vs. 'nights'. While I could have focused on just one or two hotel programs, I liked these three, as not only was it workable via the locations to which I travelled, but as many know, each hotel program has it's pluses and minuses, and it's very nice to pick vacations based on which chain has the nicest property in a particular location.

For this strategy to work best, one needs to do this multiple years, as while you can make elite levels yearly, it will take a bit longer to rack up the points, splitting them amongst more than one program.

Burned through most of the hotel points long ago, but I still have ~400,000 MH points on the books. Probably use some of these up in the next several months, as points don't age well, in this age of point inflation/deflation/withering.