Yes, all fair points - personally, I travel to stay in hotels (I even like to stay in hotels in the city I live in). The other aspects (seeing new sights, trying new foods) are all just a big bonus for me. You all can see in my volume of trip reports that I rarely stay in one hotel for more than one night at a time, which I know isn't most people's cup of tea.

Frankly, the CPP calculations should be done on a more personal level. I do them, like MarkOK said, in order to decide whether cash or points makes more sense for the specific hotel I want to stay at on a given night. Sure, I'll move things around based on prices, but if I have a hotel I want to stay at again or try out for the first time, my criteria really is more along the lines of whether or not rates seem reasonable based on what that hotel usually costs (not what other hotels around are charging).