Fair enough, but that's what I use because that's how the Marriott Rewards program is built.
It's designed to reward the 120,000-mile Travel Package above all else. The "penalty" for booking a single-night stay is comparably high.
Starwood and Hyatt are my single-night programs. Of course Starwood rewards 5-night stays, but the penalty for booking a 1-night C&P award is much less.
If I didn't do the volume of hotel stays required to reach a Travel Package at least once every 2 years, I have to admit I'd consider moving *all* stays over to Starwood, Hyatt, or IHG. Those can be much more rewarding for people like redeeming short award stays more frequently.
Agreed...the variability helps, assuming you want to redeem during the peak days/season of course. I'll give Marriott credit for *generally* making these rooms available at a greater rate now than they did a few years back. Redeeming in Phoenix in March is a good example. There aren't many cheap alternatives, Priceline probably won't yield a good result, so using MR points can be pretty attractive. Then you look in August and think "Why is this Category 8 hotel $99/nt.?"...just remember March.
Almost nothing is Category 3 anymore. I have a reservation at a Category 5 Spring Hill Suites in three weeks. A mundane airport hotel in Minnesota. Granted, one I like and visit 2-3 times a year, but that's the baseline for Category 5 these days. I used to value my credit card annual certificates at $200 each, because I could always find a really good hotel for them...midweek stay in DC, even a couple decent European stays when the Euro was $1.40. Now I value them at maybe $100, max. (Thankfully the annual fee is still less than $100.)
That implies that the value of the hotel
to me on that stay has also shot up. Just because Marriott wants $300/nt. doesn't mean I value it any more than $150/nt. If I redeem points for it, I'm might still be taking my $150/nt. rate in mind when deciding whether it's worth it....depends on what the other hotel options are and whether I'd really take the trip if I didn't have the points.