Not to complicate matters, but if you want a guaranteed over-the-water bungalow/villa (OWB), the wonderful Beach House Maldives (which is a HH Waldorf Astoria property) might be the way to go. Unlike almost most other Maldives resorts, its "basic" rooms are OWBs with small infinity pools on each deck and a very nice swing chair to lounge in (along with the usual reclining lounges, etc.). Plus it's a wonderful property in many other respects. My wife and I stayed there in February and consider it the nicest place of many fine places we've ever visited. If interested, check out the HH forum for reviews and comments. (Hilton's Conrad Rangali also gets great reviews, but it's basic rooms are by the beach and do not sound as nice.)

If you did decide to go that route, you'd want to get at least one HH Amex Surpass Card, which get you Gold status for your first year. In the past, there have been bonus HH points for getting or initial spending on the card--if that's still the case, both you and your wife might want to get one.

I know that as a HH Diamond I had a choice between free breakfasts and free happy hour drinks. Not sure what the options are for Golds, but you might check on that, such as by emailing or pming the GM whose address is included in a few of the posts and who occasionally posts himself in the relevant BHM thread in the HH forum.

Having said all this, I realize that you'd need to cash in AA miles for HH points, as someone already pointed out, which you may not want to do. And there have been some recent glitches with the HH award system, so you'd want to make sure that the award room is even available. Finally, I do see how going the Hyatt route could work out well.

Whatever you do...and this may go without saying...use your Hyatt or Hilton credit card to pay for incidentals such as meals. Those charges will add up at these expensive properties. You can claw back some points via those cc charges.

Happy trails!