I have had between 150 and 250 nights per year for five years running, have been Plat Prem for that time and have LT 2000 nights accumulated. I find it hard to believe MR can't look at my profile and respond to my polite request "travelling with my son...etc". Essentially it's been a lousy Customer experience. I probably don't get what I was after precisely because I didn't pull a dykwia. Battery Park RC I am a repeat Centurion guest on top of it. Never mind, happy to stay home.

I find it interesting how the OP has been flogged by some for talking about leaving Marriott. I always viewed the point of this website as somewhere to get the most value for your money, which is what the OP is seeking.

Here's a thread I started quite a while back when I looked at making a change from Marriott: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...endations.html

Choosing a hotel program depends on your personal preferences. The OP favors suite upgrades as a perk, which is similar to my desires.

I am currently:
MR Plat (will drop to Gold in 2013, then lifetime Gold in 2014. Need another 95K MR points for LT plat). I only have 27 elite nights for this year, including the 15 for having the MR credit card.
Hilton Diamond.
Hyatt Diamond.
SPG Gold (will be Plat by end of 2012).
PC Platinum.
Club Carlson Gold.

The nice thing about having top/near top elite status in that many chains is that we get elite benefits no matter which chain we choose. Of all of the programs, I prefer Hyatt although they have their drawbacks. Every program has its pluses and minuses.

My personal ranking of each hotel program is:
1) Hyatt
2) SPG
3) Marriott
4) Hilton
5) PC
6) Club Carlson

For my wife and me, the grass is a bit greener at Hyatt and SPG (we favor Westin/St Regis) than at Marriott. YMMV. And guys/gals, please keep in mind that this website is about getting the best value for your dollar.

Off topic for a second...I'm just curious: how many nights do you stay in hotels each year to maintain status in so many programs? I stay roughly 60-65 paid nights/year averaging $250 per night (not stay) at 4-5* hotels in major cities globally, but I have to force every night to be with MR otherwise I'll never make it to 75 (this year I happened to need a conference room so that got me +10 nights).

As I said earlier I realized this year that MR Gold pretty much is equal to Plat, but even if I did 50 nights with MR, that only leaves me 25ish nights with another brand, which is barely enough for a low-mid status level.

Are you constantly doing status matches and opening new accounts, or do you actually live in hotels 200-300 nights/year? Or just a bunch of CCs?

keloutwest, that's a very good question. And again where YMMV. I've done a mix of status match/credit card/hotel nights.
I'm retired military that traveled quite a bit, allowing me to achieve both Starwood Plat and Marriott Plat Premier while on active duty.
I am now an airline pilot and I spend 200+ nights/yr in a hotel. Since I commute to/from work, I spend 5-10 nights/month in a hotel room on my dime.

Most of my airline rooms don't count for night credits; a few count when I make charges to my room. And that's only Marriott that counts them. Hilton made a mistake this year and gave me credit for hotel nights while in training (for 2 months) at a Doubletree; it was enough to get me Diamond status.

When I'm paying for a hotel room, I stay almost exclusively at Starwood and Hyatt properties. I currently have 23 stays/nights at Hyatts and 24 stays/27 nights at Starwoods ... I will hit 25 paid stays at each chain before the end of this year.

Most hotel chains will give me status perks while on an airline stay. Hyatt and Marriott give me lounge access or a breakfast coupon. Hilton and PC are hit or miss. I don't know about Starwood, as I haven't stayed at many on airline trips.

I have most hotel credit cards but only Marriott (15 nights/yr) and Starwood (2 stays/5 nights) give me annual stay credits. Hyatt and PC give me Plat but my Hyatt status is due to my paid nights.

The biggest driver to a program is which cities you stay in. Marriott/Hilton/PC give you coverage in most cities. Starwood and Hyatt are more limited. However, if you only stay in major cities, you could have Starwood or Hyatt as a primary and Marriott/Hilton/PC as a backup program.
Since Marriott gives lifetime status, I'd recommend that as your backup.

For me to achieve Hyatt Diamond status, I will have paid for 25 nights in 2012. Each night was a single night stay.
For Starwood, I will have ~15 nights/stays, 2 stays/5 nights credit card, and ~ 8 nights/stays using cash + points option ... Starwood counts your free nights toward elite status.
If I gave those nights to Marriott exclusively, I would barely make Plat.

There's a bit of pain involved in maintaining that status ... I only stay at a hotel one night at a time, but it's worth it to me since I get decent perks for being top tier. As an example, I fly to Port of Spain Trinidad & Tobago for work. The airline puts me up at the Hyatt. As a Diamond, I get lounge access, which gives me free breakfast. Food is expensive there so having that access is easily worth $30 per stay.
I had to do a couple of nights' mattress runs to keep status this year but they cost me ~$150 total. That's worth it to me for having lounge access for 2013.

My rankings above are based on spending a lot of nights in various hotel chains and the value for my dollar. Hyatt is a bit more expensive but I became a AAA member and it has paid for itself several times over with Hyatt.
No single hotel chain is perfect for everyone and no single hotel chain is the worst for everyone. It's going to depend on what you value most. If you're close to lifetime Plat with Marriott, I'd recommend chugging it out and getting that status. Once you've done that, you can experiment and decide which hotel chain you like most.
Keep in mind that as you get older, you usually become less price sensitive and place more value on the added perks. At 52, I'm really starting to enjoy Hyatt's perks even though it usually costs me a few extra dollars to stay at a full service Hyatt.

iflyjetz, I give you HUGE credit for just remembering all of that stuff! Most of us have trouble enough just remembering all of the perks and rules for just one or two hotel programs, and you seem to have them memorized for five or six hotel programs. ^

;) With all of that hotel memorization, is there any actually room left in your brain to remember what all the buttons are for on the commercial jets you fly for the airline? :D

Thanks Ifly! That was a really interesting post.. I often wonder how it is staying on airline's dime..

I'm always on Govt rates, which count towards night, but makes me very price insensitive.. ie if it offers govt rates I am there... Makes for some interesting choices as I will often have a couple of brands offering govt rates..

ifly, thanks for the informative post! 99% of my travel is for work. We have a fairly lenient policy where we can essentially pick any hotel. Though I try to avoid Ritz Carletons for the raised eyebrows it would generate and generally any 4 or 5* hotels that are >$50 more than the next lowest 4 or 5 star option. That means I can usually pick between Marriott and SPG in most of the places I'm traveling to. But as I said, if I split, I'll basically have low-mid status in both.

I'm nowhere close to lifetime Plat status. May get to lifetime silver next year, but that's not worth much. If it weren't for the 10 year requirement, it would be much easier to hit SPG lifetime plat in terms of number of nights. I wish either program would have a $-spend option. I know this is controversial, but it bugs me that I can spend 2-3x as much in full service properties all around the world and not make status whereas someone staying a few more nights in lower end properties at $100-150/night in mostly the US/Canada can (aka the road warrior). Rant over.

Bottom line is that I'm completely conflicted. It's hard to use one hotel as a reason for breaking my loyalty, but when Marriott disappoints me in customer service, it's so easy to start thinking about SPG. In addition, 75 nights at SPG seems to afford MUCH better benefits, not to mention the 'basic platinum' at 50 nights, which seems fairly comparable to MR plat, but much easier to attain.

Of course, 35 Marriott nights and a couple of premier/reserve credit cards will get you gold in MR and HH...just saying...

Not quite. For the SGP SNA, suite upgrades begin to be confirmed five days in advance of arrival. You also don't call; you request the upgrades by computer and then the upgrade is confirmed, if available, by computer and email.

Marriott should allow this on a limited number per year or exception basis or at least informally to their top tier members. I mean PlatPrem could be expected to receive some exceptions, no?! Otherwise the promise of upgrades is just marketing fluff.

Keep in mind that there are some people who have a better record of success with upgrades. I've had a couple of years where I got upgrades between 50% and 60% of the time. Yes, I did ask for the upgrades, either in advance or at time of check in, and some people don't feel that Plats should have to ask, but the reality is that a sizable minority of FD staff persons do not even understand what elite benefits are, and if you do not ask for them or explain the benefits to them, they do not know any better. My attitude has always been simple, "If you don't ask, you don't get."

This is exactly why having some sort of system like SPG "suite nights" makes sense, unless you "work" the system your suite upgrades with Marriott will be closer to about 5% in my experience.

Well, right, in my case, I did try to ask in advance, and was declined a commitment. Now, I am not saying I am entitled to an advance upgrade, but "it would have been nice", and as a top tier (plat, plat lifetime, and plat prem all in one...) I would think something comes up on the reservation guys' screen prompting him to give it more than the cursory "i don't think so...or probably but can't tell...or maybe not" all in the same phone call.

There's absolutely no incentive for individual hotels to give a plat a suite upgrade if you arent' a repeat customer at their hotel. And they don't know that you don't pester every single hotel you stay at for one. We are like you, we don't pester, and it seems like when we could really use one, we don't get it.

Thanks for the clarification. While I've been an SPG Plat for the last 4 years, I've never had more than 50 nights in any year and won't even make Plat this year. So I've not had the pleasure of playing around with those suite upgrades.

BTW, I have greatly cut back on my Starwood stays this past year due to their creating a bunch of "tiers" within the Plat level. I would have been a "Plat Lite" as it has been described in the SPG forum and thus wouldn't get the suite upgrade coupons, the extra points, the Amassador, etc. And thus in my head, anyone who wouldn't be able to get to at least 50 nights in a year wouldn't really be top tier with SPG (more like mid-tier to me with my normal 25-30 stays per year.) So I cut back on my SPG nights and moved them to Hilton as I've never really tried them before.

I'll try to get Hilton Diamond this year to go with my Marriott Plat and PC Plat. And then at the end of 2013, I'll see if Hilton really is worse than Marriott or not. :p