if your stays are for business (business paid), go ahead and do your research on this board with the various hotel programs.

if your stays are personally paid, then hotel programs usually not worth the money. Use Priceline or hotwire to save the money.

Also not being locked into a chain allows you to stay exactly where you want to instead of settling for a hotel that is not ideally located or is not in prime condition just because it is part of your chain.

When reading about the various hotel spots, take it with a grain of salt as most folks are loyal to one, maybe two chains so they can for the most part only provide a viewpoint on the properties in that chain. A blinders effect to what else is out there.