Also, if I recall, AAA doesn't have half-diamond ratings, so all that stuff that might more appropriately be 2.5 goes into the 3-diamond bucket. At any rate, these ratings are often only good when making comparisons in the same rating scale. If you used Hotwire, for instance, that same property is probably rated 3* at least. They've always had same properties rated a bit higher than Priceline. But you don't know this until you can actually make the comparisons.

I haven't used AAA ratings much in years. (I'm planning a trip to SFO with a drive to PDX, and I haven't even dropped into the office for Tourbooks or maps though I've been a member for over a decade.) I don't really find them that useful. I prefer reading personal accounts from travel guidebooks or user ratings online, even though that has to be taken with a grain of salt as well. I would agree, though, that the 3-diamond AAA rating is too wide to be particularly useful. 4 or 5 means pretty good stuff. 1 or 2 means marginal. At least 3 means it's not marginal for the most part.

Hilton Garden Inn should be a fair 2.5* on Priceline. Most of the HGIs are 2.5*, just like most of the Courtyards. They target the same customer. HGI is a somewhat newer brand for them, though, so many of the HGIs are new buildings, and the rest should be at least new renovations ("new" being I think sometime in the last 5 years or so). 60 bucks is a fairly good price for HGI.