Originally Posted by Jon Maiman

I live in the US. For IHG I have two credit cards IHG Premier Mastercard and IHG Select Mastercard. The latter is no longer offered. Both include an annual Free Night Award where it is easy to get more value from it than the annual fee for the card. So distilling it down for IHG, I recommend you get the IHG Premier Mastercard.

For Marriott, I have the Marriott Boundless Visa. There are many current flavors of Marriott Credit Cards available. I find The Boundless to be the sweet spot on the cost benefit analysis (rewards vs. annual fee). There is also an Amex card available with a much higher fee and a much higher value annual Free Night Award.

While I occasionally stay at Hilton brands, I don't do so often enough to warrant getting one of their charge cards. There are many variants of Hilton credit cards available as well.

Finally note, many of the charge cards run periodic offers which include a better signup bonus (more points, etc.). So unless you need the card immediately, I recommend waiting until there is a good signup bonus offer available.

--Jon

P.S. For airlines, if you will be concentrating your travel on one or two of them, you may want to get their credit cards as well. Most of them include some amount of free checked baggage and better boarding priority as benefits. Even (especially) if you won't qualify for Airline preferred status, the credit cards are a good way to effectively get the equivalent of the minimum preferred status level.