Thursday, February 12, 2009

Hotel Guest Rating or Hotel Star Rating

By Chris Linch

The two things that people seem to most confuse when booking a hotel room is the guest rating and the star rating. What is the difference in these two ratings? How do you use these to find the right hotel for you?

The rating known as the star rating is only to show what the hotel offers. The thing about these ratings is that they do not describe how nice the property is, how clean it is, or if the bed is comforatable. A five star property can be worse than a one star property when it comes to these factors.

The star ratings include everything from room service to valet parking. This has nothing to do with the rooms themselves. Just because you are booking a three or four or even five star property doesnt mean that it will be impeccable.

This is where you bring in the Guest Ratings. These are ratings by people who have stayed at the property and said something about it. These are towards the appeal of the property. A dirty dingy property will never have a 5 star guest rating. I have seen one star properties get four star guest ratings.

The next hotel website I put together is getting rid of the 5 point guest rating scale. I want something different. I want to get rid of all this confusion and let people know what they are booking.

You do have to be wary of guest ratings too. Just because a hotel has some below average guest ratings, doesn't mean the property is bad. I wrote in a previous post that one hotel review we received rated the hotel a bad stay because the internet at the hotel was down. The guy said the stay was perfect except for this but gave the hotel a 1 out of 5 for a rating on his review.

The way you use these together is to pick the star rating of the hotel representing what you want the hotel to have. Once you get this figured out choose a price range and look at the available hotels. Use the guest rating last to determine which of these properties will get your hotel reservation.

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