BigLar

Don't fall into the trap of narrowly focussing exclusively on miles. I used to do that with Priority Club until I found out that points can be much more useful, and the bonuses typically don't include miles.

Anyhow, I value the hotel points as more useful to me. The current bonus is generating points for me at an incremental cost of about a quarter of a cent a point. By incremental, I mean the cost I pay over and above basic, no program lodging.

At $0.0025/point, even a 40,000 point hotel is only $100/night, which is much better than I could do, even on Priceline.

I'm waiting for the Fall/Winter 2 -> 8000 promo, and I'll be hopping my drawers off.

sdsearch

Obviously, you have to do your own math, and it can vary depending on your situation.

In my situation, the places where I stay 100ish times a year (one night per stay) there are no no-program hotels any more nearby (I'd have to really search far and wide for them). The standard of comparison for me thus is the cheapest hotel in the area, which doesn't have miles to speak of (it does have Delta, but at an awful transfer rate), but does have points: Red Roof Inn. If I pay ($55ish/night) for staying in its dumpy room 10 times, I get enough points to stay in its dumpy room once free. Whoopee (not).

Meanwhile, I like to fly internationally a few times a year, but being on the US west coast EVERY overseas destination is a 10+ hour flight, and I'm tall, so I can't stand to fly all that in coach seats. Thus I use my miles only for upgrades or outright business class awards. As such they're WAY more valuable than even 2 cents per mile. (Basically, I couldn't afford to travel internationally if I didn't earn all those miles, but I can still afford to stay in hotels everywhere despite "wasting" all those points on miles.)

This is because with miles you get the "magnfying" effect (when using them for above-coach seats) where the increase in miles is totally disproportional to the cost in cash: Business class flights may cost 5x more than economy in cash, but only 2x more than economy in miles typically.

Genearlly there is no such "amplification" effect in hotel points from my perspective (because I don't need luxury rooms, I "fit" in normal decent rooms just fine), and thus the greater value of miles to me than points. (There are some OCCASIONALY amplification effects in hotels, but not forever: The most obvious one I can think of is the way that EVERY Scandic hotel was 10000 HHonors points a night for the last few years, but that's changing this fall as so often Scandics will no longer be particularly worth getting on points.)

(Meanwhile, over at Priority Club, you're comparing apples to oranges. You're talking about bonuses not applying to miles, which means you were ONLY looking at earning miles directly. Whenever I mean miles, I mean looking carefully at both earning miles directly and earning points and then transferring to miles. Until last September, Priority club to AA gave you 2 to 3 times more miles by earning points then transferring to miles, as earning miles directly. However, multiple "devaluations" at Priority Club over the past year make it worse than Choice for miles now, at least for US airlines.)

BigLar

Clearly you've done your homework. And you're right; what works for one is not necessarily better for others.

If your cheapest no-bennie place is $55/night, it shouldn't be that hard to find a place like with Choice or IC at about $65/night, but I could be wrong. Anyhow, the way I look at it, what I'm really paying for the points is the delta between what I get at the bottom end and what I'm paying for at a better place.

I haven't ben everywhere, but almost everyplace I've been staying I've been able to negotiate a rate at, say, a Marriott for which the delta is less than $10/night, sometimes as low as zero. In those cases, the points/miles are really free or extremely cheap.

In my current location, I haven't been able to do that which is why I looked elsewhere and landed with Choice. My delta is down around the $10 range and that's what I use to calculate the points value. And even that wouldn't have been so attractive without the connection with Preferred Hotels. I mean, why go out of your way to get enough points to stay in a 10,000 point property when you can book a room off the net at the same place for $70?

I used to be a real miles whore, but they're a lot harder to earn for me, and I can stand 6-8 hours in Coach (east coast) and put my effort into getting two weeks free at a very nice hotel.

To each his own.