Best hotel loyalty program?

You can't buy bottles with Starwood Points

Starwood has the best loyalty program, hands down (I think among ALL programs - hotels, airlines, rental car, etc). If you're going to invest in one hotel chain, that's it - unless your clients are in cities with crappy and / or no Starwoods.

Starwood also has, IMO, the best places to use your points - W, St. Regis, and Luxury Collection properties galore.

get a starwood amex

1) Depends on how much you travel, how many years you plan to travel for, and where you travel to.

2) flyertalk is probably a much better place to go than WSO for stuff like this

Because I care about convenience and carrying over my points/benefits to all the random places I go, HHonors is the way to go. They're freaking everywhere in the entire world. My beef with Starwood's experiences has been their lack of locations.

However, as a broad generalization, Starwood is viewed as the best service and gives you lifetime membership. If you plan to make this a part of your lifestyle, then lifetime membership is such an unbeatable offer.

There is no one clear winner. But some has some advantages/disadvantages over other. For example, Hilton points are generally overvalued. They do have locations in random small towns.

Marriott also has random town locations. But they often have black outs (e.g. new years night in New Orleans) or minimum stay requirements which kills the whole purpose. Sometimes they'd throw in discount stays (e.g. pay 15K points for what generally costs 20K). Have more lounges (free breakfast, etc.). Also most of their promotion earnings are tied to staying 20-30 nights for that quarter which might be difficult unless you are traveling for work every week.

Starwood has no black outs as long as there are rooms and often allow a cash+points (best value). They lack random small town locations, but often have the best big city/resort properties. Places are generally more hip, but no lounges in most places (overcoming it now with free breakfast Platinum amenity). Takes the quickest to become platinum (50 nights vs. 75 nights). Generally have better promotion of all 3.

There are many other small pluses/minuses. But general consensus is do Starwood first. If travel allows, go double Platinum on both Starwood and Marriott (I did it for all 3 years). Take advantage of any challenges if you want to add more (I had Hilton Gold for couple of years). Disagree with what Xepa mentioned. Marriott also has lifetime status (and first to do so).

Nicest hotels is a total crapshoot, but I will say Starwood wins overall. In places like NYC, they all will have something nice if you can drop points. As you move further outside, it will get all over the place. For example, top hotels in South FL are Starwood. In Clearwater beach, even though you have all 3 chains, Starwood one wins hand down for location. When I was in Saint Petersburg, Russia last weekend, W was definitely the place to be. Same with the Sheraton in Kampala. But in Bogota, JW Marriott was in a much better location with better of everything. In New Orleans, JW Marriott is nicer than the Ws or the Sheraton. There is no Starwood in awesome locations like Charlottesville, Va or Hanover, NH, but there are like 4 Marriott in each area.