I don't have a (practical) choice in the matter. Currently, all my travel is on my own nickel. I negotiated a very attractive rate at a Fairfield Inn, so I get Marriott points. The Hampton Inn next door wouldn't deal.

Since I'm in a hotel every night of the work week, I can't justify even the $50/night or so premium it would cost for another chain, although I did do it gladly for the HH ACAQ promo - the net points were worth it.

So - as long as I'm paying 100%, the relative attraction of SPG or Hyatt or the others is pretty moot.

However, when the company puts me back on the road, I'd like to know which way to jump.

This has been my point exactly with the airlines. In hotels, I agree that SPG is the best because points or money, they take you in and you can always use either if you have it!

That means I can walk into the ST Regis in Aspen and spend $550/nite or use 12k per nite points and be treated the same, get the same availabilty, get the same benefits with no blackouts, and that is why they are hands down the best. You can also stay at some $125/nite lower level SPG hotel and STILL get this kind of service overall!

It is a no brainer. Go with the WOOD!

MM

Pinniped - I don't understand your comment regarding the value of hotel points for rooms compared to airline miles. When I say the Hilton GLON award rooms I received are valued at $1,500-2,000 per week, I base that on the fact that the cheapest room available at the hotel is about $200/night for a room. If I don't have $200 or loyalty points I can't stay there - in any room. I can value my points at $200/night, though I tend to use something closer to the Priceline rate I could get in the city, with a factor added to account for breakfast and room upgrades.


When I get a First Class airline ticket to Europe for 100,000 miles I don't think of that as a $10,000 ticket, even if it is listed for that on the airline website. The difference between buying a $500 airline ticket and redeeming miles for a $10,000 airline ticket isn't really comparable to paying $100/night using Priceline without breakfast, lounge access, or upgrades, or paying $175 for a loyalty brand room and getting upgraded to a $300 room, or using hotel points and getting an upgraded room. The range of prices for hotel rooms is so much smaller than the price range for airline tickets.

While my wife and I couldn't consider buying two $10,000 airline tickets, we can cash in miles and fly first class at an affordable cost or we can just buy economy for a small fraction of the first class. On the other hand, we can stay a paid week in a hotel and as a paying loyalty member, we can expect to get a decent upgrade for a room that might go for double what we paid. Hotel upgrades in terms of fair market value typically work on a factor of about 1.5 to 3 (example: $100 standard room, $175 junior suite; $250 suite). Airline's value their upgrades at a factor around 6 to 16 (example: $500 economy class price; $3,500 business class; $7,000 First Class).

That's also my methodology for cities where Priceline is prevalent: in the case of my 100k ALON at HWV in 2002, I know I could have had the room for $130/nt. because I saw people Priceline for that on about my dates. Add in the taxes, fees, etc. and you get about $900. I rounded it off at a grand with the upgrade and breakfast. (This was back when HWV treated Golds on ALONs very well. I understand that the upgrade/breakfast has been cut back somewhat.)

In the case of your $200/nt. GLON, would you have been able to secure a decent room anywhere in that neighborhood for less money? If not, then I'd say you hit a home run with the HHonors program and I certainly can't question that "value". In my experience, as a Gold/Silver, if the rates everywhere are that high, I probably can't get an award room to begin with - especially in the big European cities. (This brings us back to the value of doing all your stays at qualifying rates if you can reach Diamond - then, award rooms open up nicely at the premium locations.)

I have to admit I don't have a good methodology for valuing int'l awards for two reasons: (1) whenever I've tried to get award rooms in places like Paris and London, there is no availability, and (2) we generally prefer boutique hotels vs. the big American chains abroad anyway. So beyond an initial rate quote for the Hiltons (which usually yields absurd rates), we pursue other avenues.

I guess my point isn't to question how everyone does their valuation - it's just to not get carried away if there is an opportunity cost to getting the points (e.g., paying a higher-than-necessary qualifying rate, doing business with a more expensive-than-necessary partner to earn points/miles, etc.)

I'm even questioning my own decisions to participate in iDine for Miles - are 10 air miles that might get redeemed years down the road worth more than 20 cents that I can invest next month? Six months ago I would have said "Gimmie the miles!" Now I'm leaning towards switching to good old cash.

I guess I continue to be amazed that people don't look at the earning side of a hotel program when considering how it stacks up to the competition. In my view, you do pay a price for the lack of capacity controls at Starwood...you earn less points for each stay. Don't confuse this with earnings of Starpoints from other sources, like the SPG AMEX credit card. I'm talking strictly about points earned from hotel stays. I've given a comparison of earning & redemption at Starwood and HHonors in another thread so I won't repeat it here. In summary, at the higher level properties (the ones most people redeem their points at), Diamond HHonors members earn 5 times as many points as a Starwood Platinum but only spend about 3 times as many for a free room night. That's a huge 40% difference. Some may be willing to give that much up to get a free room just about anytime; I'll take the higher earnings and plan my travel further in advance to ensure I get the award I want. As an HHonors Diamond member, it is almost never a problem.

My own valuation has an HHonors point being worth about 3.29 times each Starpoint.

I have a hard time valuing any hotel points against Priceline rates. It doesn't really make for an apples to apples comparison. For one thing, you can never guarantee where you will end up with Priceline. You also do not qualify for upgrades or breakfasts on a Priceline rate. Priceline hotel rates are basically the equivalent of the airline's weekly E-savers and I don't see too many people valuing their airline miles based on those fares. In fact, it is just the opposite. Many people are valuing their miles based on international business or first class travel. If you apply that method to the hotel programs, you would value the points based on typical international hotel rates, not a Priceline rate.

Pinniped, I'm not sure I understand your valuation methodology. If I read things correctly from your post, it seems you have multiple valuations based on whether you are talking about a Priceline city, or whether the travel is international. Having a dual valuation seems to be a highly suspect approach. Why not establish a single value for your points (in each program) and then make award/pay decisions based on that?

In practice, when I'm thinking about an opportunity cost to get points, I'm only using one valuation: the redemption of the points for a nice domestic US property. When I think "How much 'rebate value' does SPG Amex yield on purchases?" this is what I'm thinking of.

Internationally, the reality is that I typically forget about Priceline because I don't usually want what they have to offer, and forget about awards because the rates are either too high for my tastes or the awards are unavailable. I kind of like the small boutique hotels in Europe better than the American chains anyway, so it's not as big of an issue for me.

Perhaps my opinion would be different if I were top-tier and KNEW that I was going to get a big upgrade to a suite. I'm Gold in MR, HH, and SPG. I doubt those levels would earn huge upgrades on award stays at any premium property. So I'm not building a lot of "value" into the award based on upgrade chances.

I probably should have pointed out in my first post that my opinions and calculations are very much driven by the two credit cards (SPG and HH Amex), not the hotels themselves. These days, the cards are my biggest source of points, not stays. I understand your perspective - HH Diamond is a very good place to be from the perspective of earning a lot of points AND being able to redeem them without hassle.

Hyatt of course.

Although I was never an elite in their program, I will say one thing about Hyatt: my company always had negotiated rates with them that were pretty favorable, and those rates always came with upgrades to a concierge floor whenever it was available. AFAIK, Hyatt was the only chain with which our company had corporate rates that actually had upgrade language built into them.

In practice, the STL Hyatt and the Tampa Hyatt generally DID follow through with rooms on the "Business Class" floor or a concierge floor. (Those were the only two Hyatts at which I did a lot of biz stays.)

Marriott, HH, and SPG eventually came through with upgrades when on corp rates, but the upgrades were tied to your status, not the rate itself.

Hotel point valuation really is individualized to one's own travel patterns, much more than airline miles. The variation in types of hotels and rooms is so great. A program's value depends on how it meets your needs for hotel rooms.

Points are definitely worth more when you have a higher elite status with the loyalty program. A few years as gold in Starwood and Hilton, then a couple years as HHonors Diamond and now Starwood Platinum I see a vast difference in award room availability with Hilton and a far higher percentage of nice room upgrades in both programs.

I really value my hotel status more than airline status these days. The flight portion is just two days of a holiday, whereas the room stay portion is generally 8 to 14 days for a holiday. I like a nice room and hotel benefits like lounge, breakfast, and late checkout.

The value of the *Wood points is quietly going down. Less and less rooms are being made available for free nights and more rooms and suites are being excluded from the upgrade pool. While the terms and conditions do not reflect this, they are getting updated as more complaints are made. In addition, promos targeted at some customers rather than the hotels, such as spend $4,500 for 3 upgrades or 3 weekend nights are turning off many SPG loyalists.

When you say fewer rooms are being made available for free nights, are you talking about suites? The reason I ask is that Starwood's big selling point is their lack of capacity controls.

From reading the boards here, I know frequent guests in all of the big programs are complaining about fewer rooms for upgrade. I wonder if that's because the hotels see business bouncing back and they are more hopeful that they will sell those rooms.

It doesn't seem to be common knowledge (even amongst some FlyerTalkers) that Starwood's "no capacity controls" awards policy only applies to standard rooms. There are a limited number of standard rooms at each property. Once the standard rooms at a property are no longer available, either because the rooms have been sold or claimed with awards, you will be unable to claim an award at that property (unless you pay more points) even if non-standard rooms are available.

Intwrite may be implying that Starwood, or the hotels in the Starwood program, are re-labeling some rooms as "deluxe" or "suites" in order to take them out of the standard category, thus making them unavailable for claiming with an award. I have not seen any evidence of this and don't recall any postings on the Starwood thread about it except with regard to upgrades. It seems clear that some hotels have re-labeled certain suites to avoid having to upgrade elite members to them. This is a dangerous trend, particularly if extended to the pool of standard rooms, but again no evidence as yet.

I agree with this reasoning. Similar thread from last year is:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/009024.html

For me, Marriott seemed to provide more rewards for revenue dollar, but they would not comp me to their top status.

I was comped to SPG Platinum, but have been very disappointed. Hyatt has provided good reward value, and the Faster Free Nights program has made it an obvious choice if you are looking for free nights.

But when you consider the FFN program, I don't think anybody else comes close.

OK - I think I get what you are talking about. I've had this problem at Marriott properties as well when I've PAID for a suite. The hotel industry in general is starting to get VERY loose with what they call a "Deluxe Room" or a "Suite".

In my Marriott case, I called the front desk to say "I booked a suite" and they said "Well, we don't have any FULL suites. They are all mini-suites." They ended up giving us a second room at a very low rate, but it was still frustrating that the word "suite" by itself now can mean anything from "slightly bigger hotel room" on up, depending on property. (I rarely see the term "Junior Suite" used any more.)

See:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/009279.html
where they talk about room restrictions. There are only a limited number of standard rooms available. Once they are gone you would have to use additional points in order to get a next level room. This may have always been the case, but it is not how they compare themselves to other chains.