First thing I said:

"My mileage varies."

Followed by my experience at finding what I found- which is that I've found plenty of alternatives to spending $300+ a night in places that are supposedly expensive.

Thanks for making your point clear to me. I will be sure to give it all due consideration.

Spouse & I do focus on FF miles, but there are often times in the cycle when we're not ready/able to hit another airline card. That's when we do a mid-cycle hotel card churn for the bonus. Given the choice between using day-to-day spend on

1. a card that earns 1.25 airline miles/$ (Starwood Amex) or even 1.5 miles/$ (Chase United Club), or
2. a card that will yield 50-70K hotel points for a modest spend of $1K or $2K

I'll take the hotel points, even with the latest devaluation bloodbath.

Burn them. Burn them all. The devaluation made the decision to burn all my Hilton points painless. Had been thinking about using them for a fall trip anyway. Now the decision was easy. No regrets.

I think it really depends on your situation. I want to burn all my Hilton points. However, I really dont have time to travel, can't take my day off any more. So even though Hilton points is in devaluation, I still want to keep them in my account for future.

If I had the points to burn I might but last year was a burn heavy year for me. My highest balance with any hotel is 37,000 with Hilton and that's hardly worth anything pre-devaluation

I have 31k spg and 30k PC pts. I am unsure as to when to use them. For PC I am hoping one of these days a good points break hotel pops up.

Very interesting discussion and this has been on my mind a lot lately. For someone who primarily acquires points though CCs, I've taken a step back and decided to be very selective about hotel cards.

I'll definitely be burning my Marriott, PC and Hilton balances (modest by FT standards). Unfortunately, I won't be getting great value out of them as I don't have aspirational stays involved. For a while I was thinking about planning an aspirational trip just to get good value out of these points. I know that's what happens by spending too much time on FT!

Going forward, I will collect flexible points and club carlson points. Carlson seems to be a valuable program for now. I'll also target free night bonus cards like Fairmont, Hyatt and Citi HH Reserve. I really maximized Hilton double points promotions last year but probably won't pay much attention to those anymore.

And cash back has made a come back in my wallet.

I was waiting for hotel transfer bonus for marriott travel package. After massive devaluation, i burned 330k marriott points last week and another 330k next month for travel package. Even without transfer bonus, travel package is a still good deal for marriott points.

When do the point increases take affect>????

march 28. Getting burning!

Do the old conversions still work for trips booked before MArch 28 for travel occurring after that date or must the travel occur now?

Any idea what the avg 30,000 room goes for under new program?

Bookings made before Mar 28 are under the current chart. Any modification on bookings made before Mar 28 would be subject to the new chart.

There is no such thing about avg 30,000 room. You would need to do the leg work to check the properties you have in mind, whether they would change categories. Also the new chart has SEASONAL pricing. So a 30K can be 30K in 2 months and 40K in the rest of the year... No way to guess other than actually checking them - at least HHonor has published the upcoming changes AND has means to check how much a property would be priced in different months of the year.

slight correction or elaboration (depending on how you read Happy's answer---I know what was meant, but some might not)--sorry Happy.

I think Happy meant to say you can book now for stays after March 28. But if you modify them after March 28, 2013 then it would be subject to the new chart.

Actually, it would be along the line of I just spent 5,000,000 miles and redeemed a porsche. You used miles instead of cash on something you would otherwise can't afford or would never pay for.

Burned some Hilton points, not worried about Starwood or hyatt. Devaluation doesn't rile me up like it does to some, but from a value perspective I'd rather pay 50k per night for the Conrad NY vs 70-80.