maxim730

As long as the hotel has hot water and a clean bed!

stant

Only worth $50/night at aspirational properties? I've been at properties where the breakfast for two is worth more than $50/night and that's before you consider the value of booking a $200/night room and getting a $3000/night suite.

austin_modern

Except a vast majority of frequent fliers would never pay that 3k in the first place so the value isnt really there, since that wouldn't have ever been purchased in the first place. Mostly, one gets free rooms and/or free breakfasts which doesnt amass up to whatever aspirational suites one might think they're getting for free.

TPG (or his minions) always inflates wildly the value of status in order to feed their advertising machinery.

gudugan

I hate this argument (which also applies to business class seats too) because many people are purchasing both business class seats and higher tier hotel rooms with cash. People redeeming points or getting free upgrades is the minority of these seats/rooms. A vast majority of frequent fliers actually means business travelers, who are more likely to purchase these with cash anyway.

Sure you can value an upgrade at $0 if you would never buy it at all. But you can also value it at face value if you would have purchased it with cash. It's much more fair to value it near face value, or at least half of face value.

KRSW

Platinum is still the sweet spot, which is all I bother to shoot for. 4pm late checkout is worth the most to me, breakfast (elusive as it is these days) is appreciated.

As far as dollar amount:
Bonus points: TPG $360, and I'll concur, about $360.
4pm Late Checkout: TPG: $120, I'll say $150 given some Hilton properties will offer this for ~$40-$80, and it is a benefit I do use quite often.
Dedicated Phone Support: TPG: $20, I'll give it $0. I'm still on hold for 20+ minutes to change a reservation because Marriott's IT department is so incompetent.
Enhanced Internet: TPG: $60. Me: $0. Most hotels I stay at these days no longer have the captive portal/sign-in screens and everyone gets the same thing.
Upgrades: TPG: $1,200. Me: $400. Just looking over how rarely I get a true upgrade and the delta between what I paid and what the upgrade would have been.
Lounge Access: TPG: $150. Me: $30. I'm not paying for lounge access. My $30 is whatever I'd probably spend at a nearby bodega over the course of a year.
Welcome Gift (breakfast): TPG: $360. Me: $120. Similar to the above, even if a client is paying for the trip, I'm not going to pay for an overpriced hotel breakfast. And most of my stays are at the lower-end of the spectrum where a passable breakfast is included in the room rate.
SNAs: TPG: $200. Me: $30. I like the idea, but they often expire before I can use them, with many of the hotels I'm staying at not having any true upgrades. One of the Westins I stay at doesn't even have a suite in the entire hotel.
So: TPG: $2,475. Me: $1,090.

clarkef

I love the breakdown, my calculus would be based on what I would pay in cash to have these perks

• Upgrades - at least $500. I am almost always upgraded to a suite. And I'm the person that will ask for exactly which suite I want. Last summer, I stayed week stay at the Westin Mission Hills at a stupidly discounted rate of $119. I then talked my way into the Chairman's Suite, the best suite on the resort for about $1,110/nt. That upgrade alone would have been worth $500, maybe even $1,000
• Lounge Access - Most of my properties don't have lounges, but having access to coffee/tea and snacks is worth about $5-10 per stay.
• Breakfast - This is my favorite perk next to upgrades. I'm a breakfast guy and I almost always spend $25 on breakfast when traveling. Pre-pandemic this perk was worth no less than $500 to me. It would be higher, but my travel varies widely and I don't know if I'll be staying at a Four Points Hotel (breakfast = $10) or a higher end Westin (breakfast = $30)
• SNA: $500. I usually use all of them.

WillTravel4Food

This is an interesting point. It may indeed cost $3,000 for that suite. However, the realized value of that suite may be less than or exceed that $3,000. For example, last fall I spent a night at the Ritz Carleton Wolfsburg (points + cash). With my Titanium status I received an upgrade to a corner suite. It was a Saturday night in a hotel clearly serving high-end business travelers, so the hotel was mostly empty. The suite was really a conference room with an attached bedroom. The living/conference room centered around a very large round conference table. As one might imagine, I didn't realize much value from that given I wasn't in the mood to convene a meeting that night between the football match and my dinner reservation. But I do suppose the rest of the suite (BR, BA) was significantly upgraded from a standard room. So there was value I received that otherwise wouldn't have been made available. Benefit? Yes. Appreciated? Surely. Value realized at the rack rate? Probably not. If I had been traveling with my wife, my calculus would be entirely different.

Anyway, don't read too much into anything where the messenger has skin in the game. You'll never really know where the advisory information ends and the marketing pitch begins.

Adelphos

The "one neat trick" about your Hilton advice is that it requires absolutely no "loyalty" (in terms of nights stayed) to reap any of the benefits you describe. I don't disagree with your general point - it's just that whether you stay at Hilton once a year, or 100 times a year, the loyalty recognition is the same with that program for Aspire holders.

IMO the way to go is to
1) Hold a Hilton Aspire
2) If the footprint works for you, try to get Hyatt globalist
3) If Marriott footprint works for you (more likely), get whatever status you would get natrually
4) Lean into boutique and independent hotels, programs like Virtuoso and Amex FHR, etc

ajf87

I know it's fun to price out our award travel and flex about getting $x.xx/point/mile, but that $3000/night suite upgrade is only worth $3000/night if you'd actually pay that much to stay there. Likewise for international F/J redemptions. When I book J on QF North America to Australia via AS/AA, it may be "worth" $6k on paper, but that's only if I was already willing to pay full sticker for QF J. And I'm not. Same for hotels - I'm never spending $3k/night on a hotel room. My ceiling for a very special occasion (like, honeymoon) is $1k/night.

Good advice. I also think your choice of airline factors into it too. If you have status with and fly American a lot, lean Hyatt due to their partnership and reciprocal earning. If you're a United person, Marriott is better once you reach Titanium for the Silver status. Another advantage with Hilton is the ease at which you can earn the sign-up bonuses. When I just got into this game back in 2018 it took me less than a year to accumulate 1 million Hilton points with fairly modest spend and stays for work. And they don't have a 24-month rule for earning sign-up bonuses like with the Marriott cards. As long as you're under Amex' (relatively lax) limits on new cards you're golden. Need 380k points for your aspirational WA award stay? You can get there just on sign-up bonuses between the business and three personal cards.

stant

i never said they would pay that much, my point being that there is certainly potential there for far more value. you might not give a darn if you are traveling for work and only in the room to sleep 8 hrs a night, but if you are on vacation with the better half and maybe kids, and you get upgraded from a 2 queen to a 2000 sq foot room? I think most would pay more than $50/night for that if given the option.

SacTownGuy

The actual value to most people is very low. The primary people that get actual benefit are people that travel a lot. I am 20-30 actual BIB nights a year, and some of those are at the cheapies like Courtyard and Fairfield, so my value is pretty low. If a person travels 75-100 nights a year there is significant benefit.

Also, if you have a first "weekend away" with a new love they might be impressed when the clerk says "I see you are a Titanium member Mr. SacTownGuy. Thank you for your loyalty." Maybe that will get you a little status with your new significant other!? Lol.

WillTravel4Food

Ha! At first it's just as you say. Then the realization that you're out of town a lot dawns on them and all of a sudden your status doesn't seem so great. Fortunately I made LTT and now my wife gets the benefits without the headaches of my chronic absenteeism.

clarkef

I would respectfully disagree. Travel is far too variable to make such grand pronouncements. I've probably spent roughly the same amount of time on the road as you have. However, I rarely stay at Courtyards and haven't been to a Fairfield in ten years. I generally stay at Westins and Sheratons and almost never at an aspirational property. I routinely get upgraded to a true suite and generally get a full breakfast. This presents real, tangible benefits to me. However, if you don't eat breakfast and don't care about being upgraded, then the value of status, regardless of the level, might be negligible to you. It 100% depends on 1) the individual's travel patterns and 2) which perks, if any, they value.

ajf87

Women aren't going to start fingerblasting over getting that 3rd floor room and a free Snickers at some podunk Courtyard. You're not George Clooney, and this isn't Up in the Air. An upgrade to widebody J, I could maybe see a mile-high club application. If she's already sharing a hotel room with you, you're in. Neither of you should care about the room.

nacho

The best upgrade we have received without asking is in LM at Kuala Lumpur and Prince Autograph in Tokyo. We got great upgrades after asking in JW Macau, the REN at Dusseldorf. The definition of a great upgrade is if we "wow" when we get into the room (a positive wow).

We have been Marriott members for like 11 years. The other upgrades are nice, mostly 1 category above what we booked which is totally by the book.

We travel out of our own pocket and we love to travel so a $200 night for us is not feasible (I don't think many regular households has leisure spending of $12k a year in hotels). Mr tried to work out if we should make LTT while we had a chance but it didn't seem so for our needs. I'm close to LTP anyway so let's hope I'm still alive until Mr gets his LTP.

UA S might be useful but it's so rare that we need it anyway since we are *A which is more useful on non-UA metal.

Lounge access is great but I have booked 2 hotels with lounge in Canada for my upcoming trip and both are still closed due to Covid (I think most restrictions have been lifted a while ago). There's a Delta in WA I'm thinking about booking and they basically throw you 750 pts and ripped the rest of the benefits off. Why would I stay there?

Then I am going to stay in another hotel in Istanbul on TK's dime and apparently that hotel doesn't even bother to give out benefits, and the Lurkers here are not exactly the most customer friendly people either. Their reply was cold and by the book. There seems to be no distinction between T and P except the published benefits and exception.

Personally I don't value lounge access much, it could be useful in places like Canada or Hong Kong where eating out is so expensive. I will never pay extra to buy the access though. I won't be going back to HK for a long time and I'm sure I can find some microwavable dishes in Canada as my dinners there.