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If you can make "good enough" use of each cert each year at a hotel where the paid rate including tax* would more than the annual fee, you've come out ahead.

I call these types of cards "net negative annual fee" hotel cards. (These exist for Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, and Hilton, though in Hilton it's only in the case of a high-end card for which getting value is more complicated.)

* You do not pay any taxes on most free night stays. In a few cases, you may pay resort fees which are not taxes, or small flat local taxes which are assessed independent of the hotel rate. (I don't know if these exceptions apply in the Marriott program or not.)

Of course, there are several kinds of people for which these cards don't work as well:

1. People who don't do personal stays in chain hotels (costing at least this much) every year.

2. People who only want to stay in hotels that are excluded by the points cap (35000 points in the Plus case, 25000 points in the non-Plus case). In many areas, these points caps exclude most or all "full-service" hotels, in some other areas they don't. In most areas, these points caps do exclude most "luxury" hotels, of course. (I would think people who mostly stay in big city centers or at resorts might fall into this category, while people who often enough stay in suburbs or smaller towns are less likely to have a problem with these points caps.)

3. People who only want to use one hotel program even when they can make money by staying for "free" at another hotel program.

4. People who don't do the math and just "instinctively" balk at annual fees.