My company has just informed us that we must use a company card and we cannot use our affinity cards to book travel (air/hotel). This means all bonus points gained from card use are out the window. I sure hate this because now my biggest bonus for obtaining points, I cannot use.

Given that, now I have to decide which program in 2010 to use to build points staying at hotels using promotions and which program provides the most amounts of ooints per stay or dollar spent.

Looks like Marriott, Hilton and Inter-Continental are the big 3 in my area. Knowing that I am only going to be able to get points for nights stayed and/or dollar spent, I am wondering if I should just decide where I stay based soley on who is running the best promotion at the time.

Any thoughts?

IHG tends to have the biggest promotions if you follow their forum closely, followed by Marriott with Hilton in last place. One problem with Marriott promotions is that some of them require Visa. With Hilton you also get some additional points for booking and paying with American Express. Not sure what you have for a corporate card, so examine these issues. IHG does not seem to care what you pay with in terms of promotions though they do have a co-branded Visa card.

I always look at it a different way. I usually plan our family vacations far in advance, so getting the necessary points is not an issue, but the location and which are hotels are where, is the consideration. Example - we are going to go to St Maarten at some point, but no Marriott there, so I am going to switch some stuff over to SPG. My main program is Marriott.

I would decide between Marriott and IC - Hilton's value prop is just not that good IMHO.

Cheers.

IHG tends to be VERY easy to get platinum at. As a matter of fact I did it in 7 nights stayed and there are people on that forum that have done it in less. The one problem I have with IHG when booking travel is that booking a stay at an IC in SE Asia (where other programs tend to be VERY cheap) is the same as booking a stay in a place like Tahiti where all hotels charge a lot of points. I would agree with the above post saying find out where you want to travel or what other things you want to do with your points then choose your program.

Some quick thoughts:
Marriott has no hotels in the Pacific other then Hawaii, but has those nice 7 nights + airline miles travel packages.
IHG has no properties worth staying at in Hawaii (there is a holiday inn in Waikiki that is very uninspiring), and IMHO has the worst Plat benefits.
Hilton has some cool options for purchasing theme park tickets (My wife and family are HUGE Disney fans).

Again, decide what you want to use the points for and choose the program that best allows you to do that.