While I've come to the conclusion that hotel points that started out as hotel points are generally more valuable than airline miles converted from those hotel points, I'm less certain of the value the other way around.

These examples are, for most people, funny money. If you would never pay for the Conrad if you were choosing a hotel for money in Hong Kong, and you would be happy enough with a hotel which charged US$150ish a night (and there are plenty of those most seasons), no way do I see that worth one saver biz ticket to Europe or Japan (as a 6' tall person who can't sleep in int'l coach and thus biz is the lowest award I'll take unless Premium Economy is available). Even with $250ish a night hotels I don't see four nights being worth int'l biz.

While I might never pay $4000 for int'l biz, I do have to consider that an int'l coach flight upgraded with miles would still cost me well over $1000 (in coach fare + upgrade copay) in cash. This is why I consider even 4 nights at $250ish a night not worth the miles I could use for int'l biz.

But that just argues against the very lmited transfer to hotel points available out of AA (but few other airlines). It's an entirely different situation when you earn hotel points as hotel points and then consider whether to transfer to airline miles or redeem for free nights. In the case of Choice Privileges points, for example, 16K points is next week getting me a night at a nice hotel in western Norway where even the cheaper decent hotels are $200+ a night, yet those 16k points would only convert a little of 3k miles (at any miles airline), which is worth nowhere near $200ish to anyone, I think. (The conversion to 6 Southwest credits is a little better, but still not necessarily better than keeping it as points in this example of point redemption value, given that the 16-credits Southwest award is now capacity controlled and it now takes 32 credits to get a "use it anytime" award at Southwest.)