Actually, they are being nice here. As even you mentioned above, you would like to get the best, most unbiased feedback possible. And that is the same as most anyone else asking a question here as well. The members here are really doing nothing more than helping make sure this thread is placed in the best forum to provide you just that type of feedback.

As for your OP....

I'm fairly new to Hilton myself. I'm a lifetime Plat with Marriott with a few thousand nights with them. So I like to think I know that program pretty well. With that, I've found that CC sign-up bonuses are where you can really maximize points from CCs. If you can get either a couple of free night certs and/or a bunch of signup bonus points, that will greatly increase your point accounts very quickly.

With that, Marriott, in the US, has 3 CCs. All of those three are with Chase. You can normally get about a 50K-70K sign-up bonus plus a free night or two with each of those cards. Unfortunately though, Chase has seemed to clamp down on churning cards too often. So you probably can only churn them once every year at best and possibly only every other year.

Hilton has something like 5 different CCs some of which are Amex and some are Citibank. Since I'm new with Hilton, I'm not as familiar with all the CC ins and outs, but from posts in other threads here, it seems that churning is much easier and can be done more than once a year. If that is the case and you can get 50K bonus points or a couple of free night certs from each CC, then within a year, you could have a couple 100K points plus a number of free night certs.

So with that, if CCs are going to be your primary source of points/free nights, then even though I'm a big Marriott fan, I'd look real hard at the number of CCs and their bonuses plus the spend you can make in a year. Then figure out which is going to get you the most. And I suspect that Hilton, given they have 5+ different CCs to churn through, might be your best option.

And one more point might be to think multiple years down the road and diversification. Pick one this year and maximize the bonuses, free nights and spending. Then change over to the other one next year and do the same thing for it. That way after 2 years, you could have a nice stash of points in both programs. And have flexibility when you want to use those points. ^

Finally, if you have enough spend (and good enough credit) there is nothing to say you couldn't get CCs for both and max out the bonuses for all of them.