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As I was looking at hotels in various spots, I got to wondering what the ratings really mean. My good friend Wikpedia came to my rescue with the answer, so I thought I’d share it with you.

The star classification system is a common one for rating hotels. Higher star ratings often indicate hotels with higher levels of luxury available.

Standards of hotel classification
In some countries, there is an official body with standard criteria for classifying hotels, but in many others there is none. There have been attempts at unifying the classification system so that it becomes an internationally recognized and reliable standard but large differences exist in the quality of the accommodation and the food within one category of hotel, sometimes even in the same country.

A “five star hotel”
However, regardless of what public or private agency performs the classification, the term five star hotel is always associated with the ultimate luxury (and, by implication, expense). The lack of standardisation has allowed marketing-driven inflation, with some hotels claiming six stars; at one point the Burj al-Arab marketed itself as “the world’s first seven-star hotel”. Well-established prestige hotels are usually content to claim the traditional five.

Burj al-Arab
The Arabian Tower

General meaning of hotel rating by stars
The five categories can be described (loosely) as follows:

* (one star) — low budget hotel; inexpensive; may not have maid service or room service.

** (two stars) — budget hotel; slightly more expensive; usually has maid service daily.

*** (three stars) — middle class hotel; moderately priced; has daily maid service, room service, and may have dry-cleaning, Internet access, and a swimming pool.

**** (four stars) — first class hotel; expensive (by middle-class standards); has all of the previously mentioned services; has many “luxury” services (for example: massages or a health spa).

***** (five stars) — luxury hotel; most expensive hotels/resorts in the world; numerous extras to enhance the quality of the client’s stay (for example: some have private golf courses and even a small private airport).

The AAA and their affiliated bodies use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel and restaurant ratings levels.

Traditional systems rest heavily on the facilities provided, which is often disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as an elevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization.

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