I currently do most of my business stays with Marriott and greatly enjoy my primary property, but I gotta admit from a rewards-program perspective, Marriott is starting to look like the #3 program because of the availability of award rooms and treatment of elites and properties arbitrarily designated as "resorts".

In the past year, I redeemed Starpoints at Oktoberfest, the Berlin Marathon, the NYC Marathon, and the Rose Bowl - always at a "desirable" property in the city. I checked Marriott on each and every one of them - no availability (except for the Rose Bowl - there were more distant LA-area options available). To me, this ability to book awards for "sorta big" events is key. I know ALL of the programs block out the Super Bowl, Olympics, etc. But being able to book rooms at events a notch down from that (in as short as 3 week's notice) is incredibly valuable.

My '07 votes went to Marriott because of the Travel Packages and past success booking awards. My '08 votes will go to Starwood. Hilton timed their announcement of "no capacity controls" well for the Freddies, and I already took advantage by booking a room yesterday that was unavailable on Wednesday, but I want to see more before I cast a Hilton vote. Starwood was good to me in '07 and will get my votes because of that.

I still enjoy other Marriott features like EEO's, BB/PP's, the gift card promotions, and the Hertz HPR promotion. I also enjoy the fact that Marriott treats MVCI like an actual "member of the family", whereas SVO and HGVC stays are sort of a mixed bag of results.

But those aren't terribly related to Marriott Rewards (other than EEO). The difficulty of finding desirable awards - especially compared to what members of my equal level at HH and SPG have always had - leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth as far as MR goes.