Originally Posted by dhammer53
(I'm referring to coach awards, not biz or first) may be considered less than 2 cents a mile (if you pay $250 for a ticket, rather than cashing in your miles, the cost is 1 cent per mile);
i think the key here is coach. For me an amex point is more worth as an airline mile than a SPG hotel:
i fly F, so for example i bot couple of months ago for 240k miles two tix in J from lax-jnb via cdg on AF. (real cost is over $8k/ticket on the actual dates im going). If i had used spg miles with the 25% uptick total real points to be converted into miles would be 180,000. So, that would make each miles worth: 8.8cents/mile.
ALSO, for me:
I dont stay @ SPG as I rather stay at nicer properties, so not really missing anything (again, this is just a personal thing).
It really all depends what your trying to do with the miles/points... once you figured out what your goal is (i.e. for me is saving as much dough as possible w/o sacrificing my lifestyle or the way i live, hence saves me the two F class tix) then plan accordingly. For me SPG Amex ONLY is worth it for the miles, if it wasn't for the 25% bonus pick up in transferring miles from points imo it wouldnt be worth it. good luck.