SPG Gold gets me a possible upgrade (though doesn't seem to be as consistent as HH Gold, at least in Asia which is the only area I can do a fair comparison as of now), but most importantly it gets me a guaranteed 4PM checkout at most places. This can be quite important depending on flight schedules, jetlag, my own weird sleeping patterns, and such. I booked a night at the supposedly-horrid Sheraton Heathrow for tonight as I have a late afternoon flight out of LHR and would like to sleep in since I will be out until late. There are reasonable and cheaper accomodations, but I know I'm not guaranteed anything past 11 or 12 elsewhere (other than at the significantly-more-expensive-for-tonight Sheraton Skyline) so SPG gets my business there! Of course, SPG Preferred Plus gets me the same upgrade potential and 4PM checkout anyways for $30/year from my SPG Amex, so I'm not going to bother to qualify for Gold for next year. (Shame again SPG for the 3rd time or so, if only you'd given me the double nights/stays promo I'd give you 10 multi-night stays to qualify for Plat, and thus stayed quite a bit more next year. Happily shifted 15 nights Hilton's way in July to get the three free Q3FN Cat 6+ night certs after being enrolled in the 5/10/15 promo that was openly offered to FlyerTalkers; that's the way to do it! I have perpetual HH Gold from Citi at the moment so status wasn't even an issue there.)

The double-Starpoint-on-SPG-purchases feature that's finally shown up will compensate for the loss of the 50% Gold bonus quite nicely!

I have had great success with HH Gold upgrades in Australia and Asia. Can't comment on the US as I don't do much business travel in the US at the moment, and last I did I was sadly one of the uninformed masses losing out on a decent amount of hotel points and some miles.