Yesterday I wrote that the EDITION hotel will appear in Tampa and will be the first five-star hotel in the city. A reader asked an interesting question in the comments – what does this five-star hotel do, and not existing hotels in the city, be it JW Marriott or Grand Hyatt? This got me thinking…
Hotel star ratings are mostly rubbish
Admittedly, there is no right or wrong answer to what constitutes a five-star hotel because we all don’t have the same agreed upon metrics of what makes a hotel great. Of course, there are organizations like Forbes and AAA that can give hotels five stars, but sometimes they use weird metrics to determine those ratings.
Likewise, you have other star ratings based not on the absolute quality of the hotel, but rather on how the hotel compares to expectations. That’s what you’ll find on TripAdvisor and, for that matter, that’s how I rate hotels in my reviews. When someone on TripAdvisor gives the Ritz-Carlton two stars, it’s not because they assume it’s equivalent to a Motel 6, but because it didn’t live up to their expectations.
If you ask me, hotel star ratings suffer from the same problem as so many other areas of society that we need to evaluate. For example, if you drive an Uber, you are expected to give the driver five stars. If a driver consistently gets three stars, they are fired. However, three stars would be average for me, and giving everyone five stars simply for getting you to your destination safe and sound defeats the point of having a rating system and makes it hard to recognize those who are doing their best.
Hotels have the same problem. Theoretically, hotels can be from one to five stars, but it seems that almost every hotel wants to consider themselves four or five stars, which makes it very difficult to distinguish between brands. Major hotel groups like to refer to most of their brands as “luxury”, “upscale” or “upscale”, even for limited service properties.
Yes, Hyatt Place is admittedly more luxurious than Knights Inn, but is it really “upscale”?
Given that so many hotels like to call themselves five-star, we’ve seen some hotels take this to the extreme. For example, Burj Al Arab in Dubai calls itself the world’s only seven-star hotel. It seems that this star rating was self-confessed, so…
The reader draws attention to the following:
If EDITION is the first 5 stars.
JW Tampa 4 stars?
Epicurean 3 stars?
So, Marriott or Westin 2 or 3 stars?
Sheraton is clearly below this level, so 1 star?
Yard 0 stars?
That’s a perfectly valid point, and I think that’s where the problem lies. In general, here is my opinion:
- Brands like JW Marriott and Grand Hyatt are “upscale” and have four stars (I would say 4.5 stars, but they really aren’t).
- Brands such as Marriott, Westin, Hyatt Regency, etc. are “upscale” and have four stars.
- Brands like Hyatt Place and Courtyard are mid-range and have three stars.
Of course, the quality of individual properties can vary greatly, but that’s how I look at brands in general.
How to define a five star hotel?
I usually use the terms “five-star hotel” and “luxury hotel” interchangeably because they mean the same thing to me. I have already written about my favorite luxury hotel brands. In addition to brands such as Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Rosewood, etc., I would argue that each of the major global hotel groups has several luxury brands:
- Hilton has Conrad, LXR and Waldorf Astoria.
- Hyatt has Alila and Park Hyatt.
- IHG has Regent and Six Senses
- Marriott has EDITION, Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis.
Of course, let me admit that there are huge differences in terms of hotel quality within each brand. For example, Hyatt Regency Tashkent, Uzbekistan, positions itself as a five-star hotel. This is the best hotel in the city, and by Tashkent standards, it is definitely five-star.
Conversely, there are some hotels owned by luxury brands that don’t really feel like luxury. However, I think there are certain amenities, services and features that you would expect from a luxury brand that you won’t get in other hotels.
One small example that comes to mind is the daily turndown. The vast majority of luxury hotel brands offer turndown service for all guests, while this is extremely rare in a four-star hotel. It’s a minor thing I can point out that easily catches the difference.
Let me also be clear that luxury hotels are not necessarily better than non-luxury hotels. I often prefer to stay in a four-star boutique hotel with 50 rooms than in a five-star hotel with 400 or more rooms. I don’t want to say that luxury hotels are good and all the rest are bad, but just to share in general terms how I classify a hotel as a five-star (even if it is a hotel that does not personally appeal to me).
bottom line
There is no right or wrong answer to the question of what constitutes a luxury hotel or a five star hotel. Personally, I think that large hotel groups take too many liberties in how they market their hotel brands. Assuming most brands are four or five star and are “luxury” or “high upscale” makes it difficult to differentiate between the two.
Personally, I think every major hotel group has two or three luxury brands, with the rest somewhere below that level. I tend to define luxury hotels as five-star and then other “upscale” brands as four-star. Unfortunately, there isn’t much differentiation here, as this includes everything from the JW Marriott to the Sheraton.
I’m curious to hear from OMAAT readers – what do you consider a five star hotel, a four star hotel, etc.?