[imagesource: Max Pixel]

As soon as bots entered the picture, taking online reviews seriously felt like a quick way to get dupped.

A number of online ratings are fake these days, which begs the question, how do you make sense of the hotel rating system and avoid dirty sheets and crummy service?

The generic hotel star ratings seem to suggest that a five-star hotel will wow you, while a one-star hotel will leave you frazzled and disappointed. CNN points out that it’s actually a whole lot more complicated than we think.

Chekitan Dev of Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration says the standard of hotel ratings is shifting while a number of different hierarchies emerge, with limited overlap.

He explained that hotel ratings were initially created “to help customers work through acceptable and unacceptable choices, then within the acceptable choices get some sort of hierarchy of better and worse”. This is complicated by the fact that there are myriad approaches to rating a hotel.

Finding a five-star hotel in France, for example, was once near impossible as their rating system stopped at four. Later on, they added one more star and another ‘palace’ category for luxury hotels deemed particularly extraordinary.

In other parts of the world, stars change according to incentives given:

Dev notes India placed a luxury tax on its five-star hotels, causing properties falling into that category to modestly present themselves as four- or even three-star properties.

Hotels in some nations go the other way, lobbying to receive an artificially elevated rating so they can charge higher rates or even use the rating as leverage for loans.

Basically, since there are so many rating systems shaped by so many factors, there isn’t a single answer to the question of what star ratings actually mean.

Just to make some sense though, ratings traditionally work like this:

• Tourist (★): expect the bare minimum (not necessarily gross and grimy).
• Standard (★★): there’s slightly more on offer, with some restrictions after hours.
• Comfort (★★★): Fitness centres and pools make appearances, and the lobby is likely lovely.
• First Class (★★★★): all the above are commonplace, along with spas, concierges, car valet services and turn-down/turn-up services.
• Luxury (★★★★★): expect personal service, a large property and a “sumptuous” lobby with rooms offering “stylish furnishing and quality linens” and certainly a top-quality restaurant and bar.

As Dev says, “a one-star hotel doesn’t have to be a bad hotel” as they are just minimal, as in they don’t offer the bells and whistles and they charge less accordingly.

So yeah, check out the ratings, but don’t take them très seriously.

[source:cnn]