Actually - I have enough hotel points for a couple weeks' of free stays (at least in my market) ...I'm DEFINITELY interested in getting some free airfare now. The problem with the SPG and other good cards is that my credit sucks - I consider myself blessed to have a job that allows me to rack up the hotel points since I can't get approved for cards yet that give big point bonuses.

So if I wanted to start earning miles instead of hotels stays just by booking hotel rooms, which chain would get me to Peru or Italy more quickly?

The chains I usually have to choose from are Priority Club, Choice, Wyndham, Best Western. Occasionally, but not as often, I can book with HHonors or Marriot.

Thanks for the help!

Thanks for the welcome! I just realized that I probably posted this in the wrong forum, but thanks to all for replying anyway! My wife and I have decided to value travel more in our lives and started to climb out of our debt hole. In just a couple more months, the only thing we'll owe money on is our house!

Do HHonors and other programs do the same thing?

How about accumulating points in more than 1 program? I've started focusing on HHonors, IHG, and SPG, and am finding its working well for me.

Another thing for the OP to keep in mind is many hotels have senior rates. Which are variously defined in terms of age (62 or 65) - AARP membership (open to anyone over 50) - etc. - etc. So if the employee is a senior - the OP may be able to save some money over the lowest available rate for non-seniors. Robyn

Actually my company (a fortune 50) has a really sick discount with most hotel chains...the senior, AAA, other special rates don't come close. When I book rooms at the Holiday Inn in this one town where the regular price is 150, I get them for 87. We often can get rooms for 25-45% off, even if I'm only booking one at a time.

For this purpose it's SPG all the way. SPG gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility between airlines and alliances for travel all of the world. I love Marriott and Priority Club for hotel stays but SPG (in large part b/c of the SPG Amex program) is where my wife and I concentrate all of our credit cad spending. The value of an option is very high.

Good grief. Where are you booking rooms? Manhattan? We were at the Boca Raton Resort (Hilton) a couple of weeks ago in a junior suite with Virtuoso perks for $229/night. Holiday Inn at a rack rate of $150/night. Where is that? I booked my brothers into a Hilton Garden Inn here in JAX a few months ago for $85/night just using website promos. No Fortune 50 stuff. Sometimes it is easier to get discounts when you're working on a small scale than when you're working on a large scale.

Just curious - in what areas do you book a lot of rooms? Robyn

The real issue is which programs have low end brand hotels for the employee bookings. Marriott has Fairfield Inn. What does Starwood have? Don't think Hilton has anything as low as Fairfield. Robyn

Has anyone ever considered Hotels.com WelcomeRewards to be a reasonable alternative to a particular hotel brand's points program? You basically just get the 11th night free (based on the average hotel price of your last 10 stays) but I've always like the autonomy of picking whatever hotel I happened to fancy.

I might look into SPG though, that looks like a pretty good rewards program as well.

Oh, well, then, you've got another concern!

Not all hotel programs will give you points / status night counts / status stay counts for such corporate discounts. Some have a policy of "no earning on rates that are more than 35% discount" or whatever. (But since I don't have access to a corporate discount, I can't remember which ones, I know I just keep running across that all the time on different FT hotel program forums. I read a lot of FT hotel program forums, so I can't remember which ones ones I've seen that in and which ones I haven't.)

Furthermore, some of the rich hotel points bonuses (which comletely outstrip normal hotel earning) require booking only through the hotel program website or maybe the hotel program toll-free number. So even if you can get the base points themselves for booking through a corporate travel site, you may lose out on the bonuses. (At Choice, you have to be upper-level elite before you can earn bonuses on qualifying reservations made through corporate travel agencies.)

Haven't had a problem with that, so far.