Why is everybody saying that? just curious. In my case, I did indeed just blow all my hilton points for a stay in Australia. Is HH's award redemption going through the same devaluation that Marriott and IHG are doing? or worse?

To the OP: Check out American Airlines Explorer Awards. It's a fascinating concept with some interesting possibilities. If you can open one of those almost useless DL credit cards, you get access to turning every 10,000 Skymiles into $100 of flight credit that you can apply to almost any DL itineraries. You've got >$1000 of DL possibilities. Mind you that you never even have to activate or use that DL credit card. Just being accepted enables your DL account to see these possibilities, as well as hotel/car redemptions in the Skymiles Marketplace.