5 Star Hotel and/or Restaurant Ratings

[tanman4u]

I do a fair amount of reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp on hotels and restaurants when I'm traveling. Especially if I've used either of those to choose a place I feel like I should do a review myself.

 

This past trip I stayed at a couple of very nice high end hotels, and I stayed at a couple of Holiday Inn Express'. All were great hotels. But how can I justify giving a 5 star rating to an Intercontinental Hotel and also to the HIEX? I mean normally a HIEX would be considered a 2-3 star category hotel. But if I gave then 2-3 stars for my review it would indicated that I didn't like it as much.

 

Same with restaurants. I ate in two of what are considered the top restaurants where I was and hell yea they were 5 star quality. But I also ate in a couple of very local places that wonderful food and great service. It would be a disservice to them in Yelp if I only gave them 3 stars, etc.

 

In the end I wound up giving 5 stars to the places in all four of my examples above and just hope anyone reading them realizes it's not quite an apple to apple thing.

 

What say you?

[LaffingBear]

Different interpretations. There is no absolute correct when dealing with opinions.

 

If I get great friendly service and delicious food in a sparkling clean diner.... isn't that 5-star?

 

I tend to think of review sites based upon my expectations, and whether they were met, or exceeded. Ive only written a few on TripAdvisor, and I tried to be thorough in explanations and details. I use Yelp alot. Ive given 5-stars to food trucks, and less to Michelin Star restaurants that were excellent but didn't wow me.

[+ Tarte Gogo]

@LaffingBear is right, it is how well they did respective to your expectations.

Given a local restaurant charges much less than a Michelin rated one, you can give them 5 stars if they met all your expectations, given the price you paid.

 

Similarly, a 5 star hotel at $500 a night that had a rude guy at the front desk deserves a bad review, even if everything else was perfect. At that price, they should have enough money to train him appropriately.

[+ azdr0710]

I've seen many mom-and-pop cafes receive five stars because they did everything well within their category......

compare to other businesses within the same level for reviews......a Motel 6 compared to the Four Seasons is silly and entirely inappropriate....

 

you did it just right, @tanman4u

[Zapped]

It’s like competitive diving scores. In that case, there’s one for the degree of difficulty and one for the execution. When I look at hotel listings, I distinguish (on, for example, Hotwire) the rating for the type of hotel, which is determined by services and amenities, and the quality rating from customers.

 

In college courses, a student can receive an “A” in a 100-level course and later on in a 400-level course in the same subject area. Someone reading the transcript understands that while both grades reflect excellent work, the 400-level course required a different level of mastery.

[Guest]

I don't see the dots on the tripadvisor reviews the same as stars or diamonds given by a book reviewing hotel sites. The stars review how luxurious the facility is. The dots on a tripadvisor report relate to how well that hotel does in relationship to other hotels of that quality. At a Holiday Inn Express, I would rate with 5 dots a property which is clean, quiet, functional, has friendly staff, a decent breakfast line-up, and internet which works well. For an InterContinental hotel, I expect a luxurious experience with plenty of attentive staff, a luxurious bathroom, beautiful common areas, and knowledgeable and available concierges, in addition to anything I would expect with a 3-star property such as a HIX.

[tanman4u]

I don't see the dots on the tripadvisor reviews the same as stars or diamonds given by a book reviewing hotel sites. The stars review how luxurious the facility is. The dots on a tripadvisor report relate to how well that hotel does in relationship to other hotels of that quality. At a Holiday Inn Express, I would rate with 5 dots a property which is clean, quiet, functional, has friendly staff, a decent breakfast line-up, and internet which works well. For an InterContinental hotel, I expect a luxurious experience with plenty of attentive staff, a luxurious bathroom, beautiful common areas, and knowledgeable and available concierges, in addition to anything I would expect with a 3-star property such as a HIX.

Thank you, that validates what I was thinking.