I'm used to getting 50000 miles or such for $3000 spend in 3 months or whatever. Yes, sometimes it requires $5000 spend but sometimes it only requires $1000 or $2000 spend, which is why I think $3000 spend makes a decent average. $10000 of spend is thus about 3 signup bonuses' worth of spend on average. Just one free night certificate thus doesn't seem to me to be worth diverting $10000 of spend from signup bonuses to Reserve.

Of course, if you don't do any credit card signups most years, you may have totally different view of things. But I travel enough that just one free night certificate a year doesn't get me very far, no matter how little or how much work it took to get it.

And it's easy to get free night certificates from other hotel programs for way less. With IHG it requires having a $49/year credit card, no actual spend. WIth Mariott it requires having a $85/year credit card, no actual spend, but in Marriott's case it's capped at category 5, which may not suit some people.

Compared to those, having to spend $10000 on one card (on which I'd never spend that much "naturally") just to earn one more free night certificate doesn't seem a good return on money to me. But again that's just me.

It may be quite different, for example, for someone who uses the card at Hiltons and who spends a lot of money at Hilton properties each year. For them, $10000 spend on that one Hilton card may be very "natural". Also, someone who has tons of business spend each year will look at spend amounts way differently than someone who only has modest amounts of personal expenses each year.