For me it's the exact opposite - for work the points are most important and for personal travel it's all about the bennies. I get a per diem for work which pays for my breakfast and rarely have free time to spend in the lounge. Those things are important to me when I'm staying on my own dime.

I could put them to use if you'd like to send them my way!

signing up for the Priority Club Visa my account went first from Gold then to Plat... from dirt.

I don't know what its worth to me, but I can definitely use the points for some free nights, so that has a true tangible value.

There was a time that I cared about status. These days, if I'm at an airport or downtown property, I save a small fortune using Priceline.

dh

Can I say both? I get a per diem when I am on the road- I'm not going to starve myself- but if I go under- I get to keep the excess. I have really enjoyed having gold with Marriott- lounge accesss with breakfast and often enough for dinner, a nice place to chat with colleagues in the evening and an room with a view are wonderful perks and have kept me pretty loyal to Marriott and I usually have enough points for a nice vacation somewhere,

I travel for business and on vacations. I Don't care about status, I stay where I can get the most points, miles or free award nights for
Vacations.

+1 to that.

When I travel for work, I honestly don't care too much about how the hotel treats me as long as it's decent. Get my bed/smoke type right, lounge access if it's available, don't mess the simple things up. I'd almost rather have the suite upgrade go to a family there on leisure...I don't need it when I'm traveling solo.

It's when I travel for leisure that I want the status to really differentiate and add valuable benefits. It's why I've always thought that Marriott has their weekend and resort policies exactly backwards...and why I'm directing so much more stay activity to Starwood in the past 2-3 years.

+1. Couldn't have expressed it better. But in the tangible category, it's about free (real) breakfast and wifi.

I travel on my own dime, but I spend about 140 nights a year in a hotel. I usually look for the cheapest rate I can find, but I focus on 4 hotel programs. I hotel hop to maximize my points, especially when the promotion is based upon stays and not nights. However in the process I end up being top tier in my 4 programs that I target HH, PC, Hyatt and SPG. So at the end of the day when I check in my hotel for the night, I do enjoy the suite upgrade, the complimentary cocktail and the complimentary breakfast. I do use the points for vacations and weekend trips

Both are important, however on a day to day basis with a LOT of hotel stays the status is more important. While I am a member of all the programs, as not every chain has properties where I go, or sometimes one brand has has a significantly better property or better location, so I have elite status with multiple chains, but I do have one I favor.

As we all know many "nice" hotels and normally excellent brands have some nasty rooms at some of their property. I have had the misfortune of getting rooms at the Ritz Carlton that a Days Inn wouldn't tolerate.

Generally speaking with status you never have to endure these rooms, even when you arrive in the wee hours after several flight delays. Also when you have status you will get a room with short notice at a full hotel, and it will be a nice room. Usually the hotel sees you have high status, and either out of respect to that, or they know you know who to call when you don't get the room you requested. With status they assume you will show up, and block the room rather than trying to sell it a second time to improve the bottom line.

Status is the juice that keeps you from getting the shaft when the hotel makes a mistake, and most hotels do make mistakes frequently.

So while I do like the points, knowing I won't always get the room next to the ice machine is more important. Lounge access, free wifi, free breakfast, a room on the "executive floor" which are usually rooms in better shape because they are normally used by us road warriors who have better things to do with our time than to damage a hotel room during a wild party, or to run up and down the hall annoying the other guests. The welcome gift, be it the fruit or cheese plate, or even just the free bottle of water goes along way for me to be loyal to a chain, and the costs of these items are just pennies versus how much I spend on hotel rooms every year.

I would also tend to think the hotels have figured this out, and realize that the vast majority of their elite-level guests are the type of guests they want in their hotel.

So the points are the cake, and the elite benefits are the icing on the cake. One without the other, not so good, but you put them together and you have something worthwhile.

Pretty much the same. Upgrades are very nice, but free is better.

Its all about the points for me personally. Getting free wifi is nice, but not necessary.
The "complimentary" upgrades are comical at best...with exceptions. Upgrades are worth it, when you travel internationally because not many people in EU are HH Diamond.
e.g. We stayed at the Hilton Sorrento Palace and we were treated like the King of England. Upgraded to an amazing room with a crazy view of the ocean and mountains. Champagne the works.

But I am all about the points, when my wife and I travel we go for a long time. This past summer we went to Italy for 3 weeks. It was really nice to stay for free the entire trip. If we had to pay we would not have gone. I added up what all the rooms would have cost in USD and it was in excess of 13k. We got to stay at the Waldorf in Rome which was sick BTW.

To Sum it up.
Points allow you to have experiences you would not have had otherwise. Status provides perks and conveniences, the cherry on top.

Nobody's mentioned much about Priceline here, but I totally agree that it has a place - especially since there are a couple different sites on the Internet that effectively remove the opaqueness by showing exactly what to bid and what hotels the winners are getting.

We use Priceline fairly often, primarily for the following:

- Airport hotels where our arrival is late and departure is early. This exact pattern fits most of our airport hotel stays - the whole reason we're there to begin with is usually because of a 6AM flight. I've found that status means little to nothing on these stays, so might as well just save the cash. Typical $150/nt. Marriott ends up being about $60 all in on Priceline.

- Roadtripping stays where the only category to bid is 2.5* - stuff like HIX, Sleep Inn, Hampton, etc. Again, status means nothing at these places and everybody in the hotel eats the same breakfast. Had one 3 weeks ago in rural Iowa where all of these places would have been about $110 with taxes: $52 all in got the HIX.

- Booking multiple rooms for several nights at a 4* type hotel, even if the city has my "Platinum" options available. Here's where you simply do the math, assume that a Priceline stay will yield the worst possible treatment, and then decide if the difference in price is worth it. My best example: I needed 4 rooms for 5 nights in Woodley Park, DC once in late May a few years ago - a fairly in-demand time to go to Washington DC. Marriotts and Starwoods were all $250+ per room per night. So I bid right around $100 on Priceline (it might have been $105...) and ended up with the OMNI. The $6,000 all in tab at Marriott became a $2,500 tab at OMNI. We decided that having four run-of-the-house rooms, no lounge access, and having to wander down the street for breakfast was worth saving three grand. And as it turned out, the OMNI *didn't* treat us poorly or dump us into bad rooms at all - and they even provided their normal complimentary morning juice/coffee service. ^

Shouldn't this be the other way around?