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By
Laura Daily
How many stars does a four-star hotel rate? Four, you say? How about three? Five? 24?
You need to know what a rating really means, as Julie and Ron Sturgeon learned the hard way. Planning
their 20th wedding anniversary trip to San Antonio, Texas, they chose their
lodging based on its superior rating from an online travel booking site. Hotel
Reservations Network, an Internet service affiliated with Hotels.com, gave the
establishment 4½ stars. The Sturgeons expected luxury.
Checking in, the couple did find a stunning lobby and a
well-appointed room. But they also found a shower that fluctuated between
scalding hot and icy cold, an indifferent front-desk staff, and a bellhop who
doubled as the only parking valet. Back at home, the Sturgeons discovered that
AAA gave the hotel a midrange Three Diamond rating.
Frustrating? You bet. A major reason for the confusion is
that every travel service seems to have its own system for rating hotels. A
savvy traveler can sort out these disparities and decide whom to trust.
AAA and Mobil Travel Guide—considered the gold standards of
rating systems—employ inspectors who visit every property they list (AAA once a
year; Mobil every 18 months) and assign ratings on a scale of 1 to 5. Inspectors mea-sure television screens,
count hangers, and check on numerous other items. AAA awards diamonds to 31,500
lodgings in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean,
scouting both urban hotels and far-flung motels. Mobil gives stars to 9,000
hotels in the United States and Canada.
Online hotel booking systems are another story. Many sites
take AAA and Mobil ratings into account when coming up with their own, and
Travelocity posts AAA diamonds. But for the most part, sites rely on lists of
amenities hotels must have—pool, gym, gift shop—to qualify for a certain
rating. Those that use inspectors, like Hotwire, Orbitz, and Priceline, admit
that their inspection teams perform double duty, as eyes for the consumer and
as salespeople who negotiate discount room rates for their Web sites. Some
online services are notorious for handing out stars liberally. A recent search
on Orbitz for five-star properties in New York City turned up 13. By contrast,
AAA gives five diamonds, its highest ranking, to just five hotels.
Guidebooks take their own approaches. At Zagat, consumers
rate establishments with points from 0 to 30. In Frommer’s guides, individual
authors have the final say, using ratings from 0 to 3.
How to play the hotel ratings game
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Compare systems—particularly
if you're making an online reservation.
Members can find AAA ratings in the Travel section
at aaa.com or in AAA TourBooks. Mobil’s ratings are available at
www.mobiltravelguide.com.
READ THE FINE PRINT
Every system explains what its ratings
mean. Look for definitions in customer service sections or at the front of
guidebooks. For example, the explanation of AAA’s lodging ratings in the front
of TourBooks states that even a One Diamond property must meet basic
requirements pertaining to cleanliness.
EXPRESS YOUR OPINION
Nearly all hotel rating services say
customer feedback—good or bad—is their No. 1 criterion. "Since we can only
visit a property once a year, we value our members’ feedback," says Kelly Bell,
the California State Automobile Association’s manager of approved
accommodations. "In 2003 we received 1,502 notes from members. If we receive a
lot of complaints of the same nature, we’ll reinspect a property."
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