Base earnings are tough to rack up the miles for a single night hotel award.
But when you use flyertalk and get all the points you can through promos and such it becomes easy.
I have racked up over 300K points and 50K Delta miles with Marriott since August of last year when I joined. This is mostly thanks to megabonuses and the 5k/night promo with delta.
Also the redemption value can be not that great if you are booking just one night at a hotel, but when you factor in travel packages such as 5 nights all inclusive for 2 adulta in Cancun for 70K, or 5 nights in St Kitts for 85K hotel points start looking pretty attractive.
Or
120K airline miles and 7 consecutive nights at a cat 1-5 for 270K the points become more valuable.

In short what I have learned here is that the best redemption rates for hotels are usually at the higher levels.