Commentary from Michael Nowlis on the hotel classification

Michael Nowlis is Managing Director of Tourism Control Intelligence. He has rated hospitality establishments for various guides and trained AAA inspectors.

Why make things simple when you can make them complicated?  Such a rhetorical question summarizes the obfuscation created by tourism authorities, intergovernmental organizations, travel companies and trade associations in their discombobulated initiatives to classify hotels. Many European countries categorize hotels using a system of one to five stars. However, that’s just the beginning.  The French government awards a maximum of four stars but has an alternative category called “four-star luxe” and another, termed “HT”. In Dubai, a major destination for European vacationers, there is a seven-star hotel. Spanish lodging establishments are graded using a star scale with additional qualifiers such as “R”, “H” and “Hs”. A modest Madrid hostel, for example, could have a rating of “** R Hs”. European hotel classification is a jumbled litter of incomprehensible stars, diamonds, letters and numbers.

While hospitality industry has long resisted Brussels’ initiatives to harmonize hotel categorization in the name of consumer protection, national tourism authorities are also losing the battle to standardize hotel ratings. Devolution and decentralization have resulted in classification standards becoming increasingly diverse rather than more uniform. In Spain, each of the seventeen regional authorities has its own approach to grading lodging facilities.  Italy has an obligatory five-level scheme administered by the Ministry of Tourism but permits local authorities to add supplementary requirements.  The four regions of the United Kingdom – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – each maintain their own classification criteria.  In a seamless Europe where holidaymakers can travel from Finland to Portugal without ever stopping at a border and use a single currency along the way, the lack of coherence in hotel classification is an embarrassment to the tourism industry. 

Faced with resistance and a lack of governmental coordination, the World Tourism Organization and International Hotel & Restaurant Association have abandoned efforts to standardize hotel classification.  Where governments and official organizations have failed, the private sector is filling the void.  When Europeans speak of “Relais & Chateaux”, they are not necessarily referring to the limited number of member hotels that belong to the marketing network.  The name has become a generic adjective to describe any lodging establishment with personalized service, luxurious appointments and extraordinary cuisine. Just as the Mobil and AAA guides have become the preeminent hotel rating authorities in North America, Michelin is considered the bible for travelers in France and throughout much of Europe. If national tourism authorities and intergovernmental organizations are unable to forge a consensus on hotel classification, they should step aside and let the private sector do it.