Hotels Travel Guide
From Wikitravel
This article is a travel topic.
Hotels provide private serviced rooms for guests. They range from very basic budget-style to extremely luxurious accommodation.
Contents |
Room types
- Single rooms are for single travellers. In many hotels, a single room is actually the same as a double room.
- Double rooms are for two travellers sleeping in the same bed.
- Twin rooms have two separate single beds.
- Triple rooms have either three separate bed, or a double bed plus a single bed.
- Suites are complete apartments with multiple rooms, intended for long stays — or just people with money to burn.
There is considerable variation and many frills within these basic types, the rule of thumb being that the more you pay, the larger your room becomes. Some business-oriented hotels offer an executive level, where a steep premium gets you access into an airline-style lounge and typically some perks like "free" Internet access or pay-per-view movies. Naming for these rooms varies, with eg. the Kuala Lumpur Hilton dubbing even its cheapest rooms as "Deluxe" and the next category up being "Executive" — but you need to upgrade one more step to an "Executive Suite" if you want to actually get the executive level perks. Some hotels are now taking an active stance on being smoke free; one example is the Marriot International Hotel Chain. [1]
Star ratings
The guide below is by necessity a generalization, as star ratings are awarded by each country according to their own rules, and the difference between a 3-star and a 4-star may be something as obscure as having a minibar in each room. It's also worth noting that star ratings are often 'sticky', in the sense that once awarded they're rarely taken away: a four-star built last year is probably still pretty good, but a four-star opened in 1962 and never renovated since may well have turned into a dump.
Note also that the ratings are weakening as marketers misuse them. The original Michelin star scale for restaurants only went up to three stars, which meant restaurants worth making a special trip for. Two stars were worth a detour, one a stop. The Mobil Travel Guide, which covers all of North America, awarded the Five Star rating to only 32 hotels in 2006, but that does not prevent dozens of hotels from claiming to be "five star". Most are more like Mobil's defintion [2] of three star "Well-appointed establishment, with full services and amenities" or four star "Outstanding-worth a special trip".
Six and seven-star hotels
The notion is that a hotel can be six or seven stars is a joke among travel professionals since most respectable hotel rating systems do not give out a rating higher than five stars. The consensus is since so few hotels really can achieve the five star rating then there shouldn't be a rating higher than five stars.
An example of a popularly known "seven star" hotel is Dubai's Burj al-Arab. It's certainly one of the most luxurious hotels in the world (as awarded earlier by Conde Nast Traveller magazine), and is also officially the tallest hotel in the world. In reality, it is a 5 star deluxe property (the popular seven star status is not often corrected in the media, though).
Five-star hotels
The five-star hotels is the quintessential luxury hotel, offering frills above and beyond the actual needs of the travel. They have restaurants and night spots that are world class, with food and entertainment that draw non-guests to sample it too.
Five-star hotels also tend to have opulent and expensive decorations; fancy gyms, swimming pools and spas. Major five-star chains compete to offer the most ludicrous frills imaginable: Westin touts its Heavenly Bed mattresses, while Conrad will let you order from a menu of pillows. Needless to say, all this comes at a steep price, and you're unlikely to be able to justify the expense of a five-star for ordinary business travel. The other downside to five-stardom is that hotels that can jump through all the hoops to achieve the rating are likely to be large and impersonal.
Major chains: Conrad (Hilton), St. Regis, Le Meridien and W (Starwood), Intercontinental, JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton (Marriott), Shangri-La, Mandarin Oriental, Sofitel, Four Seasons,
Four-star hotels
The four-star hotel is a good business hotel. Everything works smoothly, there's Internet in every room, a well-equipped business center, they'll arrange your airport transfer and room service is palatable and only somewhat expensive. And your boss will probably not faint when they see the bill.
Major chains: Hilton, Marriott, Novotel, Crowne Plaza (Intercontinental)
Three-star hotels
Three-star hotels are solid but dull. Your room will have an attached bathroom and there's probably a restaurant downstairs and 24-hour reception service.
Major chains: Courtyard by Marriott, Ibis, Holiday Inn, Mercure
Two-star hotels
Two stars means no-frills hotel. In most countries two stars means that your room probably has its own bathroom and there's probably a TV and telephone in your room, but rooms are bare-bones and you're unlikely to want to spend any more time than strictly necessary inside.
Major chains: Comfort Inn, Motel 6, Super 8
One-star hotels
You don't see many of these, and with reason. One-stars are not just no-frills, but often downright dodgy: rooms are barely functional, shared bathrooms are somewhere down a corridor and the painted ladies from the all-hours karaoke bar next door dance the horizontal tango all night long in the room next to yours.
Major chains: Formule 1 and Etap (Accor)
Unrated hotels
Unrated hotels are a mixed bag. Most, it is safe to say, are hotels that are either too dodgy to achieve even the meager requirements of a one-star — or, alternatively, too small and personal to be able to offer (say) 24-hour room service, although the service and amenities offered are otherwise of five-star caliber.
Grand old hotels
In many cities, there is one famous old hotel, usually going back to the Victorian era, that was historically the place to stay. Of course, the newer luxury hotels may have better facilities, but the old place has cachet. See Grand old hotels.
International Brands
- Accor [3] From the luxury Sofitel brand to the basic Etap and Motel 6 brands Accor is the most varied hotel company. Accor Hotels is probably the most established company in Europe and offers great choices for the backpacker and the discerning guests. Accor's subsidiary Compagnie des Wagons-Lits [4] provides hotel services for trains.
- Hilton Hotels [5] were, until recently, run by two different companies -- one in North America and the other everywhere else throughout the world. They are now in the process of merging. Hotels include Conrad, Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, Hilton, and Scandic Hotels.
- InterContinental [6] hotels include the franchised Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and of course InterContinental hotels. There have been some reported problems with the franchised Crowne Plaza brand, and some guests have alleged that service at InterContinental owned and managed hotels is superior to Crowne Plaza hotels, which, are franchised out by InterContinental.
- Marriott [7] hotels include Renaissance, J.W. Marriott, plain old Marriott, Ritz Carlton (Neither the Marriott website or Ritz Carlton's boast of this fact, however, Marriott's reservation number can reserve a Ritz Carlton hotel for you), Fairfield Inn and other hotels. Ritz Carlton [8]
- Loews Hotels [9] is a smaller luxury chain with several locations in the U.S. and Canada.
- Four Seasons [10] is arguably the best hotel chain with 9 Four Seasons hotels being rated as five star by the Mobil Travel Guide and receieved numerous awards from J.D. Power and Associates.
- Millennium-Copthorne Hotels
- Starwood Hotels [11] is one of the more upmarket brand names. Its hotels include Le Meridien, Sheraton, St. Regis, Luxury Collection, Westin, W Hotels.
- NH Hotels [12] is primarily based in Europe, but has several locations in Africa, and South American countries where other chains have not invested in like Cuba, Chile, and Uruguay.
- Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts [13] operates the Shangri-La and Traders brands, mostly in Asia but with some presence in United States and Europe as well.
- Hyatt [14] is a upmarket brand with many global locations. Hyatt also owns the luxury Park Hyatt hotels.
- design hotels [15] represents over 140 boutique, design and luxury hotels worldwide. Their criteria for selection focuses on what is exceptional, individual, local and authentic in terms of architecture, interior design, ambience and ecology within the 100 destinations currently home to its hotels.
Loyalty clubs
The purpose of loyalty clubs are to ensure that a hotel company retains its clients by offering its clients rewards and prizes for staying or holding conferences at their hotels. The basic idea is the same for each: every night you sleep or every dollar you spend gets you some points, which can be exchanged for rewards like hotel rooms, room upgrades and airline tickets. For larger brands, you can also get affiliated credit cards and rack up points that way.
An additional incentive is premium levels: either sleep at the company's hotels for many nights or collect a large number of stays, and you'll get a silver/gold/platinum membership card entitling you to various perks, such as point bonuses, lounge access, free upgrades, guaranteed rooms, etc. For gold level, you'll typically be looking at 25-50 nights or 10-20 stays within 12 months.
Some of the better-known loyalty clubs are:
- Marriott Rewards, for Marriott owned hotels. [16]
- Priority Club, for InterContinental chain hotels (including Holiday Inn). [17]
- Hilton HHonors, at Hilton hotels. Allows guests to "double dip", earning both hotel points and airline miles for the same stay. [18]
- Starwood Preferred Guest, for all Starwood hotels and resorts. Le Meridien's Moments program has been rolled into this. [19]
- Shangri-La Hotel Golden Circle, at Shangri-La and Traders. The program is unusual for having no points of its own; instead, you can choose to credit miles into various airline programs. Nights and stays are still tracked for premium levels. [20]
