Originally Posted by hhoope01

Status: One thing that can really help get the nights needed at a Marriott is the Marriott Premier Signature Visa. It comes with 15 nights toward your yearly total plus a Cat. 1-5 free night cert each year ( Only a Cat. 1-4 your first year though.) Plus it does have a nice signup bonus and Golf cert as well. Also, Marriott seems to be playing around with the benefits of the Base level Signature Visa as well. It has been reported here that it comes with 10 nights toward your yearly total. We haven't heard back whether having both cards counts with the nights of one or both card's nights count (i.e. 25 nights toward your yearly total.)

Lounge Access: Whoever told you that Gold's don't get access was just wrong. This is probably one of the most consistent benefits that Marriott offers. While I am Plat now, I was a Gold for a couple of years (doing mostly international travel). I have never been to a FS Marriott property anywhere (either within the US or the World) where did not get CL access or breakfast during the week if they didn't have a CL.

Points: Marriott does have a few "awards" that they offer only to elites or are reduced price for elites. Plus Marriott does offer a number of EEO coupons (Elite Exclusive Offers). These tend to be BOGO (Buy One Get One) Free coupons with nights and dinners.

Earning Points: You might want to check out the Do the Math! Starpoint Inflation Tanks their Value. thread in the SPG forum. Toward the end of that thread, there is a very nice "night earnings" chart comparing Marriott/SPG/Hilton. The interesting thing is that Marriott and Hilton are extremely close in real night earning capability. So the differences aren't as big as they seem. In fact, I would say that if you really like to earn airline points along with your hotel points. Marriott is better with their Travel Package awards that net you upto 120K airline points plus a hotel award.

One final point is that while yes, Hilton has removed "black out dates and capacity limits" from their awards, but I have already seen threads in Hilton where the hotels there are now playing "room type" games so that they don't have to offer award rooms. So the end result is that while that benefit is nice, it still is going to require advanced planning and some gaming to get award rooms at some Hilton properties. Very similar to the games people play here to get award rooms.

So yes, Hilton has its strengths and Marriott has its as well.