I'll give the hotels credit for something else: with a few moderate exceptions, you can actually redeem your hotel points without too much difficulty. All three of MR, HH, and SPG claim that any standard room can be booked with points. In practice, SPG and HH as a Diamond make good on that pretty much all the time, including for high-demand periods up to a certain point. (e.g. Oktoberfest yes, Olympics probably no). Individual Marriott hotels can game the system a little more, but it's still not too bad.

Contrast that to the difficulty of actually getting some of the best F awards in the world, depending on your native source of miles.