Just wanted to say that you gave me the "inspiration" to do a throw-away booking to test the waters, so-to-speak. Here's my data point for a bAAh booking which I didn't use. I received the postings to my account today, about 3 weeks after the booking date. There were two separate postings (both of which posted as base points, and thus, earned LPs). The first posting was for the standard AA miles offered for the hotel. The second posting (4,000 miles) was for the "get more miles" and the subsequent "boost". All this for just under $120 and around 5,000 RDMs/LPs. Not exactly cost-effective, but I wanted to try this out in case I need to come up with some LPs on an impending deadline in the future. However, I do plan to stay at these hotels going forward. Doing some searches, I've found several offerings in Central Europe (even in some secondary cities) from around $50-60 per night. Many are hotels I've stayed at, or am familiar with as to where they are exactly located. They seem to offer between 500 and 1,000 miles for the original rate, with the ability to add on 4,000 miles for $80.

On a side note...

The best rates we've seen for hotels in the U.S. offering miles seems to be for hotels in Vegas during the week. Just be aware that the Hilton brand properties there are a little misleading. They tend to offer around 3,000 miles for around $70. But the taxes and fees tend to be around $35-40 more than other hotel offerings. And no, this is not the separate resort fee the hotels charge at check-in..

Another side note... I was not charged the resort fee for my Veags no-show booking. As was asked up-thread. Which is not surprising, because I don't think these hotels have access to one's credit card via the reservation. My guess is that they do some sort of direct billing procedure with Booking dot com to get re-imbursed for these stays.