You may find a lot to gain from these folks as I strongly believe they place a higher value on points than those who earn them from employer/client paid stays as they have to pick and choose which stays they use their costly personally paid for points.

Now you will find this group to range from infrequent to frequent travelers, with varying tastes in hotels from budget, to full service, to high end. So POV will vary. I am a frequent full service leisure traveler, usually staying in international Marriott, JW, RC, and Ren properties, and only with rare exceptions CY in Waikiki and Tokyo.

I use Marriott (Plat) because they have the properties in most of the places I visit and the earn to burn ratio is the one of the best. As a fall back I stay at SPG whose earn to burn sucks IMO and YMMV, but their Westin, St. Regis and LC properties are great.

I have not been using points for stays the last year or two, and don't anticipate using points in the next year as the rates I have booked are reasonable by my standards and as the recovery strengthens price have started to rise and will only continue to do so IMO. There will be properties I am stay at right now for around $300/nt that will be selling for around $400/nt in another year or two.

My standard is to get a return of 1.5¢ or better when using points for a stay. Examples: The only exception over the past couple years was a stay at SYD Marriott over NYE for 5 nights which would have cost $699/nt or 2.9¢/pt. An example of where I pay: Vail Marriott 286.14/nt or 1.2¢/pt if I were to use points - I pay and save the points for a better burn rate.

Now those prices may seem high to some or low to others, and this is where those who travel a lot for business clean up. Let's say a Plat travels 100 nights for business and stays at moderately priced hotels (BTW - on the rare occasion when I travel for business, I often stay at CYs) say $189/nt 189*100*15 = 283500. That would translate 10 nights at Cat 7 or 15 nights at a cat 6 (with a few additional points - think MegaBonus). Well the business traveler did not spend $20K out of their own pocket for those points, so is more prone (IMO) to use them for any vacation stay regardless of burn rate because there will be more points next year from more business travel and there is no requirement to weigh the cost of numerous other personally paid or point stays against their use because this may be the only personal stay or one of a very few. It makes the rationalization of use much easier and less stringent for those who do a lot of business travel.

With all that said, there is no one frequent stay program that is the best. It varies for each of us and what we value, where we travel, and how we travel.

SPG is better in terms of Plat upgrades to suites and has a nice assortment of higher end international properties.

Hilton is better with free breakfast and earn to burn looks good on paper.

Marriott is better in consistency of product and one of the better earn and burn ratios.

Hilton and Marriott due to their size are better in terms of likelihood of property availability in most places.

All of these are my opinions and others will have their own. In terms of earn to burn, do the math. Take $20000 and figure out how many points that will earn as a top tier elite (assuming you will be top tier) at all chains and how many nights you can stay with those $20000 worth of points earned from each chain.

SPG comes up lacking with few lounges (only Sheraton TTBOMK), no breakfast for elites, and inconsistency of product - specifically Sheraton and a few Westins (LAX sucks). Terrible earn to burn.

Marriott comes up lacking with no suite upgrades (by rule, although isolated upgrades to suites do happen despite the rules), no breakfast on weekends at FS properties, no breakfast at resorts, RC or CYs. Lounges closed on weekends at vast majority of North America properties but open on weekends at vast majority of properties outside North America.

Hilton has inconsistency of products (actually not all that inconsistent IME as all of them have been dumps - my reason for not choosing Hilton; maybe I just picked the wrong properties). I know little else about Hilton including nothing about their lounges, if they have them.

Hyatts are nice, but very few and far between. Nice lounges, but don't know anything about their weekend lounge policies, or breakfast policies.