you are taxed on the cash portion you pay.

Unfortunately the calculation above is highly flawed as there are very few properties that charge the high season cat. 6 rates with Starwood and if they did, the rate would likely be much higher. It is more likely that a $350 cash rate would be a weekday rate at a category 4 or 5 property which would be 10k or 12k. Also SPG gold members now get an additional 250 points as an amenity. Thus the rate with SPG is going to be much higher than the calculation above.

I am seriously considering moving to SPG.
Reasons:
1- Redemption rates for every dollar is currently very close to hilton (I just need to look at the bonus program and promotions they have).
2- I already have free gold status with AmEx Platinum. So i would not worry about loosing my status (I don't travel as much as some do here).
3- In Canada, we have SPG AmEx although has a steep annual fee and we don't get extra points for paying at SPG properties. Never the less, I could potentially shift a lot of $$ to SPG.
4- And this is the most important thing, I will need to check if their properties are available in the location I travel.

Yes, I would have made this number one, as it is the most important thing! :)

I am Marriott Plat and Hilton Diamond, mostly domestic (USA).

They are more the same than they are different.

Perhaps SPG has something that is important to you that is better than the others...

I need to learn from you! I rarely use my points and have had thousands and hundreds of thousands of hh, Hyatt, SPg, mr in my accts since 1999 and have seen in some cases a free 2 weeks worth at a certain hotel now be worth a couple nights :( was waiting for a ' rainy day' but I guess joke's on me :(

Does anyone have a link to which hotels are now in which hh categories? I can't seem to find one on their site.

yes, i am looking for the same thing. Where can i find these information?

Here is the list:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilto...-category.html

There is no programmatic 5th night free on regular paid stays.

Sometimes when you price a long-ish stay, you'll get a lower nightly rate...sometimes not. Sometimes you have to play around with it: price the weekend nights separately from the weekday nights. Many times a property will have an "Nth night free" promo code, but sometimes that simply kicks in a higher base rate than whatever other "best" code you were using.

In any case, the C&P award seems (to me, anyway) to be intended for short stays. I always thought this was a big Starwood advantage to have these awards, and when HH introduced them I was pretty happy as well. (Conrad HKG was a good place to use them and may still be, depending on their rates.) They create a usefulness for points when you aren't planning on a big AXON/GLON type stay. As much as I love Marriott Travel Packages, it's a bit restricting that MR points are so incredibly useless for 1 or 2 night stays.

My mistake - I have been so focused lately on planning a family vacation (looking only at resort properties) that I mistook the Resort Escapes promotion (5th night free in the Americas) as a standard offering. I won't make that mistake again!

Thank you!

I had planned to book a small vacation in Ocean City, MD at the Hilton there over the weekend but I got busy and forgot. Between Sunday and Monday it went from 50k/night to 80k/night. DOH!
I have only myself to blame for forgetting to take care of it.

That one *should* be available at a reasonable enough room rate that you might not have wanted to spend the 50k anyway. Obviously depends on season...probably a few max-peak holiday weekends that would've made 50k look like a reasonably good deal.

With devaluation came my search for another supplier. I'm really happy with SPG right now and realize that their flexibility with their Starpoints is FAR greater than what Hilton has with their points.

Is there any avenue to get my 411,000 HHonors points out of Hilton's hands at any reasonable conversion ratio? I've looked at Delta and United points transfers with my points but the ratio's are really bad (10 HHonors for 1 airline).

It looks like I spent way too much money with the wrong program. I should've looked at SPG sooner. I am happy to have gotten $43.75 refunded from AMEX for my Surpass card downgrade. The SPG AMEX has been a worthy replacement.

You can still do 1 Cat 6 and 2 Cat 7 Axon's for 415k miles; that's 12 free nights. At a conservative room rate of $250 these points are still worth around $3000; I think you will be hard pressed to do better than that.