Hotel Star Ratings –A reliable method to rate hotels or a source of confusion and frustration?
The primary way in which travelers determine the quality, service and price range of a hotel is the hotel star rating or diamond rating system.
Yet if I were to ask most people the difference between a four star hotel vs. a three star hotel I’d get an answer like”a four star is nicer and probably costs more”. If I pressed a little harder I might get an answer like a four star has room service or a gym or perhaps conference facilities. Even worse if I reverse the logic and say do three star hotels not have room service or do all four stars have room service most people wouldn’t know.
Mobile and AAA popularized the ratings system in N. America but I can’t blame for ALL of the confusion. The sheer number of variables that can impact a hotel one way or another is daunting. No one wants to read a document describing the quality of the hangers in the closet, or the attire of the front desk staff. So both companies have a long criterion they use as an instrument to ultimately reflect a single rating. The end result is a ratings system built by experts which aims to reflect everything I might care about in a hotel but is inherently flawed.
The problem with experts evaluating things for consumers is that there are too few expert reviews and it is still very subjective. For example, this consultant states that AAA will rate a room with a wall mounted plasma screen LOWER than a room with an out-of-date 25 inch tube sitting in a space infringing armoire! No thanks, I’ll take the plasma and the extra square footage.
Yet, experts aren’t all bad either. The online travel agents seemed to decide that because the hotel ratings system was open to interpretation they would just inflate the ratings from time to time. After all who wouldn’t be lured by t
he notion of a great hotel at a cheap price? Like all scams they work in the short term but infuriate people in the long term and ultimately ruin the reputation of the business.
Once I look at ratings outside of the U.S. it becomes even a bigger free for all. My favorite example is the hotel Burj Al Arab who decided that they are a 7 star hotel. I am sure it is one of the nicest hotels in the world but is building a new category for your facility the answer. I am sure Donald Trump can’t wait to build a 50 star. Maybe we can move past numbers and go with words like Life Star or try the opposite to attract Star Wars fans with Death Star.
The internet is fixing this problem one review and one traveler at a time. I trust that if 227 people visit the Burj Al Arab and say it is unbelievable and many of them they have stayed at leading hotels around the world I’ll likely believe them.
Maybe the internet will enable the creation standard hotel ratings created by the guest for the guest. Until then I am reading reviews to make sure I get the room with the plasma.
