There is clearly better value in transferring the UR points to a partner airline to get award flights, but as you noted, you need to do a lot more research. Personally, we use our UR points to offset costs on tickets for the family instead of looking for airline award tickets. As noted, you can use them for hotels as well through the UR portal. I'm currently looking to do a middle-east trip with the family and will look for award tickets on UA, but if I can't find them, we can use UR points to offset half of PE tickets allowing us to fly PE and pay about the same as regular economy. It's all in how much effort you want to spend on finding the better value. In either case, the cost of the miles (UR annual fee) is much less than the value I'm getting for the points.