I'm currently in a situation where I can pretty much choose at random to stay in a hotel Monday - Friday nights. I have alternate arrangements if I don't want to stay in a hotel. In essence, I save about $25 - $50 worth of gas/car miles if I stay in a local hotel, so I have a great deal of flexibility.

I'm currently Continental/United Silver (2P) and will be Platinum (1K) in a few months.

I don't have any particular goals other than accumulating free stays to give to family/friends (or for the occasional WX overnight IRROPS), getting status in a good hotel program, and getting a good night's rest.

Are you saying that you can personally pay for a hotel room, to save $25-50 of travel costs?

If so, it will probably be very hard to find a loyalty program with points accrual high enough to offset the additional $50-75 of spend to stay in the hotel.

You might be able to break even using priceline and get the benefit of the good night's sleep.

Or is someone else paying for this hotel room?

EDIT: Or maybe Choice, Wyndham, and/or Best Western would have cheap enough properties to earn enough on their promotions to make it worthwhile.

Well, I'd be saving $25-$50 in travel costs, plus 2 hours of my time. "Someone else" is paying for it, but I also have certain motivations to minimise my expenses.

The market I am in (CLE) also has extraordinarly cheap hotels. I checked out Priceline and Hotwire, but my understanding is that they aren't worthwhile for loyalty.

Probably the best analogy for my situation is that I can do unlimited mattress runs.

Well, those first two sound like somewhat contradictory goals.

The programs that give free stays the fastest (such as Choice, Priority Club, and to a very capped degree BW during certain promotions) are in the programs where status doesn't do much for you. And some of those free stays are time-limited, and many of these programs you have to check reviews of the hotel because the quality can vary, so it's a bit trickier to use them as gifts IMHO unless you'll do the research for them or you know that they'll do the research themselves.

Other programs where status does give you a lot (such as Hilton HHonors) don't get you free stays very often. (In Hilton HHonors case, that's partly because your stay earnings are split between Points and Miles.)

Now, let me elaborate more on the capped and time-limited free stays: For example, Best Western currently has a promotion where you get a free night certificate for just 3 stays (which can mean 3 nights if all your stays are 1-night stays). But you can only earn one such certificate, and the certificate is only good for about half a year. (I don't remember whether it's transferable or not.) If you need a free 1-night stay during that time, that can be great. If all the free stays you might need are multi-night stays, it might not help much (if you'd choose a different hotel for all the other nights in the stay, and don't want to switch hotels for one night).

Now, let me elaborate more on Hilton HHonors status: For 16 stays (more nights, so make all your stays 1-night stays to get there faster) you get Gold status, which has basically the same in-hotel perks as the top Diamond status: guaranateed free breakfast, guaranteed free internet, upgrades when available. But how much are these "free" things worth to you if someone else is paying for everything?

Also, that's one thing to keep in mind about status from scratch: You'll have to pay for these things (unless you carefully choose only hotels where they're free anyway, in this HHonors case for exaple Hampton Inns) until you get to your status. That's especially tricky in some programs that don't have a midscale hotel a la Hampton...

Perhaps I'm dense but I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying...

Is this purely a financial calculation - where you are willing to pay a certain amount to get back some free stays, and overall you are positive $ on the deal?

Or is it a situation where you could choose to have someone pay for some (relatively cheap) stays and you want to maximize what you get back, regardless of if it's positive from a purely financial perspective?

If someone else is paying, and your only concern is to be "reasonable" in how expensive the hotels are - i.e. staying in Hampton/Fairfield Inn versus a full service hotel, then you can do well.

If redemption opportunities are most important, you should consider mixing several chains, changing hotels every night or two. Something like this would probably be best:

1) Stay at Fairfield Inns a few times for the quarterly MegaBonus - lately it has been Stay 2 times, get 1 free night, up to 2 free nights. Make sure to register using a 5k referral for new members.

2) Stay at Holiday Inn Express locations to reach whatever quarterly tier promotion you can find (something like a Stay 12 nights, Get 15k points) - while also maximizing all other promo codes. There should also be a new member referral bonus.

3) Go for whichever lower-tier program has a free night offer (Choice and Best Western usually have Stay 2 Get 1 Free offers)

Ideally, you'd want to use the hotel's own credit card to pay for the stays. If you were to sign up for the Priority Club Visa with at least 60k signup bonus, you'd start with Platinum status. The Marriott card will start you with Silver. You may also be able to convince Marriott to give you a Platinum challenge based on PC Platinum status. Then you could increase/renew elite levels incidentally as a by-product of staying.