In addition, let me correct a misimpression of yours. Although I am mostly a leisure traveler, there are some stays of mine that are paid by a buisness or a client. So, I am not purely a leisure traveler as you are.

That said however, I am most impressed that you can qualify for top tier in TWO (2) programs, not just one, but I would submit that with a minimum of 53 nights of lodging required for being top tier in Hilton and Starwood (respectivelly 28 and 25 stays, per year) I would submit that you are not the standard leisure traveler that I am speaking of, for your minimum number of nights far surpases the number of spent by most on a leisure vacation -- come on, man that is nearly 2 months in a hotel room! I doubt very much that the standard nuclear family can afford the expense, much less the time for allocating this to one's vacation scheduling.

However, even if you were required to essentially devote the majority of your resources to earning top tier in just one hotel program, I bet it would be Starwood, for their lack of relative point inflation as compared to the Hilton program, as well as the breadth and overall quality of their hotels compared to that of Hilton, at least presently.

One final thought. You expressed some puzzlement over my assertion that Hilton has devalued its redemption program doubly for those who are not Diamond, as you correctly noted that the per night point cost basis for a Category 6 hotel is the same as for that of a less exalted tier in the HHonors program. That is true, but misses the point, that I obvsioulsy was not clear in making.

With Hilton's lack of blackouts and capacity controls, a Diamond who wishes to stay 6 nights at a given hotel, just does not need to resort to booking that hotel on a per night basis that could cost upwards of 40,000 points per night, by virute of the fact that they possess Diamond in the program and thus never need to resort to such an inflated point redemption.

However, this is not the case for anyone else in the Hilton program who is unlucky enough not to secure 6 consecutive nights at the desired property --and compared to the number of Diamond elites in HHonors, these other folks are legion. Indeed, if you cannot string along 6 consecutive nights at a given property, even if you intersperse a paid night for the gap, you are toast, and then face the prospect of either redeeming a 6 night award for less than the total number of reward nights that it could have provided you, or you have to opt for the per night inflated rate -- and as I have noted above, at least with Marriott, you are given an ever increasing point discount the number of reward nights you stay at a given property, regardless of whether they are interespersed with paid stays. With Hilton, you are SOL, period. Either pay the inflated cost on a per night basis, redeem a 6 night reward for less than full value, or just don't go to that place and expect spending your points. A Hobson's choice, indeed!

In the end, if I might use a phrase made famous by Garret Moriss of SNL fame -- SPG has been "berry, berry, good to" you!!

This observation is not doubt accurate, but certain bonuses that you mentioned such as the 50,000 SPG point Australia is not characteristic of the norm of earning points in that program, and therefore should, IMHO, be viewed as an aberration, and certainly not something you should count on in the future. So too, is the fact that not everyone can just pick up and take an 18 hour (?) flight to OZ more from the East Coast where I resided, especially with kids in tow, as that is just not realistic. Finally, in your last post you correctly identified and added the points that you had earned as an SPG Platinum while staying at SPG properties. That is correct, but I would just like to note that when you posted your intial analysis, you supposedly had taken the credit card point earnings potential out of the equation, and yet now you seem to be adding it into your analysis.

These are not major deficiencies, for as I have noted above, for a leisure traveler, I think that either Hyatt or SPG can be the best choice out there, given their travel and spend patterns. It is just that you had for the most part written Hyatt out of that equation, and I thought that erroneous, that's all.

Happy travels and point earnings!

NJ