Originally Posted by
jr57
I think you'll find that most hotel points can be converted to FF miles. If that's your goal, SPG might be the route to go, as 20,000 SPG points = 25,000 UA miles. Most other hotel points will not get you 1:1 (or better) rates.
Most hotel points can be convert to FF miles somehow at some ratio, but not all the same way or at the same ratio.
In particular
you're wrong about UA. SPG is awful for UA, because while SPG transfers 1:1 to most other ailrines, they transfer 2:1 to UA. So
20,000 SPG points = only 12500 UA miles!!!
The other thing is that the OP is talking about hotel stays, not credit card spend. And on hotel stays, you don't earn nearly as many SPG points per dollar as IHG/PRC points per dollar. Plus it's much harder to find "affordable" SPG hotels many places than "affordable" IHG/PRC hotels. So on hotel stays alone, I'm not sure whether converting from SPG to airlines (other than UA) is that much better than converting from other hotel programs to airlines. But again, if UA is the airline of issue, the "half as much" bite as SPG pretty takes SPG out of the picture for those interested in UA miles from their hotel program.