Originally Posted by
dqdude
Silly post? I hope you aren't part of the welcome committee here! Perhaps you should have read my post completely before you got all high and mighty.
el_tigre has it correct...All of my points come from CC purchases. Using Marriot's reward chart vs. Starwood's reward chart is a good example.
What would you rather do... Use 100,000 Marriott points or 40,000 SPG for 5 nights at comparible properties? I'd pick SPG...silly me!
But the OP is talking about hotel spend. There is a huge difference. Credit cards may both earn 1 point per dollar, but hotel spend at marriott earns five times as many points.
Consider a top end hotel:
cat 6 at SPG cost 20K points or 10K spend.
cat 8 at Marriott cost 40K
A midpriced city like Chicago:
Cat 5 SPG cost 12K or 6K spend.
Cat 6 marriott cost 30K or 3K spend.
A lower priced city like Houston:
Cat 3 Spg cost 7K or $3500 spend.
Cat 4 marriott cost 20K or $2000 spend.
Seems to me that if your goal is earning free nights then marriott rewards almost twice as fast. I agree that CC spend with SPG is much better. If it were me I'd keep the SPG card but stay at marriotts.