Which hotel awards/credit card program should we focus on if my wife is a flight attendant (so we get "free" flights/no real need for airline perks) and I work in Asia/US frequently?

Basically looking to get the most free nights/lowest redemption cost and best perks (pretty agnosic to brand..hyatt/marriott/hilton all have a nice mix of properties).

Based on initial research, it seems like it's best to do some combination of hotel rewards programs/cards (e.g. Hyatt + marriott/hilton given hyatt's limited locations...but I'm having trouble deciding as a lot of the info seems conflicting/outdated and have specific questions e.g. have should i just concentrate on getting status with hyatt vs marriott lifetime first? Is the chase reserve/sapphire card even worth it for us if we dont need hotel miles? Would appreciate any/all advice as newbie here

*EDIT* Additional Details: We're based out of the US, and I spend ~40-50 nights in major cities across US and Asia so have good access to all major hotel chains. We'd like to spend ~10 nights a year on vacation w/ status/for free, which is why we're trying to figure out how we should strategize our work hotel stays/credit card usage. It seems like there's 3 primary strategies:

1) Spread my work stays across all these cards/programs
2) Just use different hotel chains and put them all on my chase preferred/reserve (though again I don't need airline pos) 3) Just concentrate on 1 hotel chain to get some type of lifetime status first? If so, which one? It seems like having a primary hotel program + a secondary is the best bet though unclear on how to strategize