If you are going to Hawaii, some good hotel cards may be:

Citi Hilton - 2 weekend nights after $2500 spending and a 3rd weekend night after an additional $7500 spending. Can be used at many properties in Hawaii including Waldorf Astoria Maui

Chase Hyatt - 2 night certs. There are nice Hyatts in Maui and Kauai

Starwood - 25k after spending $5000 in 6 months. Starwoods are a good redemption, but unfortunately many of the Hawaii properties recently went up in points cost. These points transfer to most airlines except United.

In terms of really good versatile long term strategy, I advocate collecting Chase Ultimate Rewards points. They transfer to United, BA, Hyatt, Southwest. Now that you'll be getting the Southwest Companion Pass, each ultimate rewards point will be worth 3.33 cents each. For this reason, I wouldn't advocate getting the Chase Hyatt card as there are bigger fish to fry by getting Chase points.

A few cards:
1. Chase Sapphire Preferred - personal card with 40k bonus
2. Chase Ink Bold - business card with 50k bonus. This is actually my favorite favorite card. It's like the one card fits all.