Who rates hotels?

Who rates hotels?

Catharine Hamm (Travel Editor, LA Times) gives expert video advice on: How should I pick a hotel?; What are the most common types of rooms offered by hotels? and more...

A hotel rating system generally indicates how good a hotel is, but you have to be careful because it's not always clear who is assigning the hotel rating. For example, in the United States we have the Mobil rating system. We also have the AAA rating system. Both of those are made using existing standards; the standards that their inspectors look for. That's not always the case in Europe, where sometimes they will assign stars to themselves and they may go up to as many as 6 or 7 stars. So those systems, to my mind, are not necessarily as reliable as those in the United States. You have to be really careful because, again, various websites will use their own rating systems, so the standards vary and you may not know exactly what it is that you're getting. Three stars doesn't mean three stars doesn't mean three stars.