Originally Posted by
lwildernorva
Without status or an Amex card, 40K SPG gets you 5 nights at a category 4 hotel; 80K Hilton gets you 2 nights at a category 4 (with or without status since 85K are required for the lowest GLON multi-night award of four nights at a category 3). If you have Hilton status, 65K SPG gets you five nights at a category 5; 130K Hilton gets you five nights at a category 4 (with 10K points left over). If you don't have status (admittedly not a high hurdle to get to Silver), 130K gets you four nights at a category 4.
HH points is definitely less than SPG points. But at 6 to 1 ratio, it is really hard to beat with or without status if the points are only use for hotel reward stays. Using your examples, 40K SPG gets you 5 nights at Cat 4. If you could convert 40K SPG to 240K HH points (1:6), you could almost stay 5 nights at Cat 7 or 5 nights at Cat 6 with 40K points left over.
So unless you really want to stay at a SPG hotel or if you are using the SPG points to transfer to another program, it is better to take the HH points with this ratio. Since OP asked the question, it doesn't seem like he felt very strongly about either brand, so the better value between the 2 would likely be HHonors.