Gold Member here.
The benefits will depend heavily on your travel patterns, and it only comes when you book with them frequent enough for long trips with many nights, so you constantly get the 11th night free perks, and when you stack it with the new capital one venture card that gives you 10+1.25 miles per dollar spent. It's not alot, but it's still nice to get a free stay with a 1.25% cash back to redeem on air fare. Like I said, the 11th night value is an average of all 10 night stays. So if you are not consistent with your hotel stays, the "free stay" will become a discount instead of a free night if you book the reward night in a super expensive property and stayed 10 nights at a budget motel.

But if you are thinking about the "hotel stay" perks, or "secret prices" perks, it's nothing to go all out for. They frequently send me 8% promo codes that lasts for 2 days (almost once every fortnight), but this doesn't benefit me if I don't have trips to plan in the next few months.So my coupons usually expires by the time when I actually need to use them.

There are no value added perks to the status, like breakfast or room upgrades. If anything, when you book the chain hotels, they are usually inventory of rooms that are usually assigned/allocated for booking.com (which owns hotels.com). So do not expect the best floors/rooms if you spend on a budget.

As for the "secret prices" that are extreme deals, the inventory is very limited, so when you book at those chain hotels, the insider prices are comparable to the hotel's member rewards prices. The example would be IHG or Marriott, when I did my comparison.

The good thing about hotels.com is when you travel to locations that are not popular destinations to those big chain hotels, so in a way it's like a reward program for the small boutique and local hotels.