I usually pick hotels based on price, location, and purpose of the trip. However, that seems to spread points over too many programs. What are some strategies? Here's my provisional strategy.

Primary program is Hilton Honors and Choice Privileges. That covers standard and budget hotels.

Some might suggest Starwood and IHG for similar coverage.

That leaves out Marriott and Best Western, though Best Western used to be plentiful but now is small.

Hyatts are nice but not too many so I just get 600 airline miles for those stays.

I book mostly through hotels.com. Get one free night for every 10 nights paid, and you aren't tied to a particular chain. However you don't get status benefits, if that's important to you.

You have to decide what is your end game. I tend to base my choices on where I would eventually like to use my points on vacation. My work travel is generally long term travel back and forth to the same city. I like many of the Hyatt vacation properties so I have been piling my stays at the Hyatt Place near my client site. It is less than the project cap for hotels but I still stay there even though many of my coworkers stay at an Autograph (Marriott) Collection hotel nearby. I have stayed at that hotel and it is nice and in budget, but since the HP is clean, nearby and in budget I stay there as a strategy that I will enjoy my vacation travel.

I would not stay at a dirty or unsafe hotel just to earn points in my preferred program, but I will sometimes go slightly further or at a more budget friendly just to stay within my preferred program.

I personally do not like the Hilton Honors program. I felt like they did a major devaluation a while back so I had to break up with them. There is very little incentive to make Diamond so i am not going to throw that many stays at them if I can help it.

You need to look at your travel patterns and goals and make the best decision for you.

Just stay in the hotel that best suits your taste and budget. Don't let the tail wag the dog.

Starwood has been bought by Marriott. You can move points from one to the other. Some time in future it is expected the loyalty programmes will merge.

The best advice

+1 for hotels.com.

Hotels.com is sometimes about that much i.e. 10% more expensive than other channels, so need to compare around. I use hotels.com when the price is the same or cheaper as elsewhere...

I think there are too many hotel programs to achieve anything in one of them as no hotel chain has hotels everywhere (at least where I need to stay).

Maybe the programs work for out people who stay in the same city repeatedly?

I often wonder why there are so many separate hotel programs and no hotel alliances... If there was a hotel alliance that included enough hotels around the world and allowed earning from all included brands, they would probably win big in the market.

There should be something in the big brands that should meet yout needs:

Marriott offers 30 hotel brands across 5700+ locations in more than 110 countries.

Hilton offers 14 brands across 4,900 properties comprising over 800,000 rooms in 104 countries and territories.

Hyatt offers 13 brands across 698 properties in 56 countries.

Yes, this.

I was spending ~30 days a year in the DC area and found a Courtyard that's got a full health club in the same building and guests get to use it free, and had a variety of food and entertainment within walking distance, so I started staying there consistently. Other people have different priorities for picking hotels - figure out what hotels work for your travel and sign up for their programs.

When you choose hotels based on loyalty programs you've got to watch out for the honey trap problem. The honey trap is when your pursuit of elite status and points causes you to pay more-- in the form of higher nightly costs, primarily-- than those benefits are worth.

One way to avoid the honey trap is to choose a program based on where you actually like staying. For example, I got started with hotel loyalty programs years ago when I started traveling for work. Prior to that it hadn't made sense to join a loyalty program because my leisure travel wasn't frequent enough to make a program worth joining and there wasn't enough of a pattern to it anyway. But with that job my first travel project sent me onsite to a particular suburban location 5 or 6 times over the course of a few months. In that town were about a dozen hotels. The best for the combination of location, quality, and price, was a Sheraton Four Points. I joined SPG because I was staying at that hotel anyway, irrespective of elite benefits.

I got my first lesson about the honey trap on my next project. After having such a great experience with the Four Points at that one location, I gleefully sought out a 4P for my next project elsewhere in the country. I found one 10 miles away from the client site in commuter traffic, but I figured it was worth it since the other Four Points had been so awesome. Turns out the place sucked. That's also when I got my first lesson about brand (in)consistency.

Since then I've understood that brand loyalty works only if the brand is one you genuinely want to stay at. Look at your travel patterns and the kind of hotels you like to stay at in those places. If one brand family fits your needs a suitable portion of the time-- i.e., location, quality, and price make sense for you-- go for it. If not, you're probably falling into a honey trap.

+1000

unless you are traveling on business and stuck with corporate expense rules, I truly believe budget and your own preferences are most important. With Visa Signature, FHR, and Virtuoso, you really don't need to be chasing elite status and points, when you can get the same (and better) benefits while staying agnostic

Continue with responses but thanks for the ideas. For airlines, I participate in nearly all the major ones, except JetBlue and Hawaiian. That used to be a lot of programs but as airlines consolidated, that left only AA, DL, UA, WN, AS, VX. I now fly all of these 6 airlines on domestic flights and do not let the honey trap affect me, except B6.

With hotels, I think I will follow the advice of not letting the honey trap or tail wagging the dog. There is a slight advantage with Hilton Honors Gold, being the Hilton Garden Inn breakfast but breakfast elsewhere is usually reasonably convenient and not expensive. (Hotel breakfasts are expensive).

My conclusion is that I will pick 2 or 3 hotel programs as primary and then choose to earn miles when staying at the non-primary hotels. For example, I'll earn miles at Holiday Inns.

Think about what types of properties - and in what part of the world - you would like to redeem your points at. Personally, my leisure travel rarely involves staying at chain hotels so I just earn airline miles from all my stays.

When I was travelling on my company's dime, I tend to stick with 1-2 programs to maximize my status.