For me, I've stayed at maybe 2 Hyatts in my whole life and they are seldom where I want to be. Of course, some promotions are well worth it. The Starwood one a few years ago dishing out 50k points for 5 stays at 5 different brands was just wonderful. However, the knowledge and effort required for such things is massively higher than what most people can be bothered with.

I used to just use the FF schemes of Qantas and Ansett (and later United) , and credit all my hotel stays and car rentals to one of those two. That's just two statements, two sets of promotions, and I could redeem multi-stop trips around Australia in business class for 37.5k points, which was a return up around 8-12c/pt.

Now, I am a member of over 10 FF schemes and half a dozen hotel schemes. I have almost 10 times as many statements to check and offers to read. Because Ansett is gone and Qantas is therefore slashing its programme to bits, it's worth it now, but only because I'm prepared to spend the time on it. The rate of return certainly increases less than linearly with effort, though.