Rabu, 25 Februari 2009

Hotel Star Classification System - The Stars Are Not Always What You Expect Them to Be

By Dani Alonso Platinum Quality Author

When staying at a hotel, many things need to be taken into account, and some of them are never included into the rules that are used for hotel star classification. As a person that has worked inside a hotel, I am aware of the kind of code that is used to classify them and how this code not alway is according to customer service.

My experience is in a 4-stars hotel in Barcelona and I discovered many of the things that happen inside a hotel and that normally you shouldn't notice when you arrive there as a tourist. But you do, many things do not work properly inside, specially when the direction is not able to provide with support and instead it directs the installations by putting pressure on everybody to get the work accomplished. This is something that the hotel star classification system can't work out.

The stars rating of a hotel can depend on things such as having a bell-boy, opening during the night, having also a bell-boy during the night, number of rooms, number of suites that are in the hotel, number of services you can encounter such as business center, commercial centers and so on.

This evaluation brings to a point where a hotel can have of everything, but if they don't hire the adequate personnel it simply will never work. And, at same time, and this practice is also often seen in Spain, hiring not enough personnel can guide to absolute unsatisfied customers and stressed workers. And this is in no way explained by the hotel star classification.

What I want to say with all this is that when looking for a 4-stars hotel, for example, the hotel web-page will never be a good place to start with. A hotel web-page is simply the competition to have the best web-page in the world, but actually does not mean that they have the best hotel. I personally prefer a hotel where personnel is not stressed and can help me when I need it, than a luxury cell in which I'll be confined with no attention at all.

Something that already most people does is to look at reviews. There you really will find out what people thinks about the hotel, how was the experience, how were they treated. There's nothing like the customers to know how you are going to be treated as a customer. A very good page that I always rely in is VirtualTourist. This web-page offers reviews of hotels in all locations worldwide in an easy to navigate software, including a very useful interactive map. Every user is allowed to post comments on hotels and they appear ordered depending on the number of comments that a hotel has received. This is possibly a better way to classify them than the traditional hotel star classification system

In any case, don't forget that the order in which hotels appear in the list is not for a qualification, as the system does not allow to use any punctuation method. The number one will always be the hotel which has more number of reviews, but of course it could be that all them are bad. Simply checking the first ten hotels you will have a broad idea of what you can expect and possibly you will know better where to spend your nights at.

After all, simply keep in mind that the hotel star classification is often not the best way to select the quality of an hotel, unless you are looking to have a king size suite with jacuzzi, which has never been my case. Of course, that's still your choice!

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Dani Alonso

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