What is the stars, asked Joxer in Juno and the Paycock, although he wasn't trying to book a hotel at the time. The owners of four Dublin hotels - the Conrad, Jury's Ballsbridge, the Radisson and the Shelbourne - were left counting their stars this week when it was prematurely announced that they had been downgraded from five-star to four-star, writes Shane Hegarty.
Neither Fáilte Ireland, nor Excellence in Tourism, which rates hotels on its behalf, would comment on these cases. But each hotel will have failed on at least one of the 28 pages of criteria. Perhaps they didn't offer thermostatic control of the ambient temperature, or the guest bedrooms were missing the two lounge chairs and one writing chair, or a supply of bath foam. Perhaps the bar staff were unable to mix international cocktails. Whatever the flaws, each has 30 days to convince Fáilte Ireland that they are still worthy of the highest rating.
The Irish hotel star rating system is still not quite as cut and dried as Fáilte Ireland, or tourists, would like it. A quick scan through guidebooks and Internet booking agencies can be confusing. Some four-star hotels are sold as five-star. Ratings vary: the Automobile Association guide to Ireland rates some of our five-star hotels as four-star. There are hotels which have found their five stars elsewhere and there are luxury hotels with no stars at all. Even on the official website, www.gulliver.ie, there many "ungraded" hotels. In fact, 14 per cent of Irish hotels have chosen to opt out of Fáilte Ireland's classification scheme altogether. It is not what was envisaged when the criteria were put in place in 1992.
"Part of the agreement for the scheme was that if hotels were not satisfied with the grade they were being offered by our contractors they had the option to opt out," says Douglas Jordan, Fáilte Ireland's registrar. "They would go into the guides as 'U', which means ungraded or unclassified. It was envisaged that there would be no more than a dozen hotels that would opt out. That has snowballed."
Dublin's Clarence Hotel, owned by U2, is one of those, allying itself instead to Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), a marketing company for luxury hotels. While the Clarence is officially ungraded, it is five-star by the standards of LHW. According to the hotel's general manager Robert Van Eerde, it believes the official criteria to be inflexible. "The way the classification works doesn't, I think, tell us what the hotel is really about. We believe our rooms are second to none, our service is of the highest quality and it doesn't do it justice to call it a four-star hotel simply because we are a city, boutique hotel and we don't fit all the criteria."
He also argues that the LHW inspection, involving an anonymous inspector using all the services during a two-day stay, is more rigorous. Since 1996, Fáilte Ireland has contracted out the inspections. They are currently carried out by Excellence in Tourism, which prematurely released this week's results, leading to the hotels in question being briefly downgraded on www.gulliver.ie. The contract is up for tender again later this year. At the moment, inspectors visit each hotel once a year, and will stay a night every second year. It might be an anonymous visit, or by appointment. Hotels which do not meet the required standards are informed and are given time to make the necessary improvements. Inspectors will make repeat visits if necessary. According to Jordan, a trained eye can tell instantly if there has been a quick tidy-up before their arrival.
Shouldn't five-star hotels be of the highest standard, every day? "There is no five-star hotel in the world that doesn't have problems at some stage," he says. "It's a service industry. You're only as good your last day. It's realistic that hotels will make mistakes; how they handle them is where the professionalism comes in." And if hotels come down in classification are they expected to come down in price? "No. It's a free market economy and hotels will charge what they can to run a profit. After that, people will vote with their feet."
Despite being described as "five-star" on the Fitzwilliam Hotel Group website, The Fitzwilliam Hotel on St Stephen's Green has no star rating at all. It decided to go forego stars when it opened six years ago and says that it hasn't harmed business at all - it's happy to rely on its reputation. Its owners also feel that the classification system doesn't quite suit what it believes is the hotel's "individuality". However, it understands why it can be of value to tourists.
"If you are travelling somewhere you don't know much about, then it gives a certain feel-good factor to see something rated," says the hotel's sales manager Brian Clarke. "Although I do think that Dublin has come so far in recent years and there are no very bad hotels left. When someone books a hotel, they can be more confident than in the days when the grading was more important. But it is a competitive market. If you do a bad job you will go out of business, no matter the number of stars you have over the door."
However, hotels might not be able to stay independent of the system for much longer. The Government-appointed Tourism Review Group recently recommended that the domestic classification system be mandatory for all hotels. Fáilte Ireland has echoed that call and is also in the process of discussing changes to the system with the Irish Hotels Federation. It acknowledges that the current checklist doesn't give a rounded picture. "We do feel it's time it was upgraded, if that's not a pun," says Jordan. "In that, we are trying to put more focus on quality and service."
There are a lot of things a star-rating can't tell you. It won't capture the essence of a place or the ambience. There are Irish five-star hotels that are soulless places, regardless of whether there is 24-hour room service. Conversely, there are plenty of excellent three-star hotels. "Atmosphere is a very difficult one, it can be very subjective," Jordan adds.
Try and book a hotel, and you might be seeing stars very quickly. The proliferation of Internet booking agencies and information guides is causing problems for both customers and hotels. Several four-star Irish hotels are often sold as five-star accommodation. The Davenport on Dublin's Merrion Square, for instance, is honest about its four-star rating, but is described as five-star by several booking agencies. "It's frustrating. It's an on ongoing issue where some sites are misrepresenting us, and we've been making a list and taking action," said a spokesperson for the hotel.
Meanwhile, standards vary across the world. A five-star in Co Kerry is likely to be quite different to one in Mauritius. Across Europe, the grading is generally done by government agencies, so the standard is set locally. There is a widespread feeling that Irish hotels have reached high standards in recent years and compare well; Failte Ireland says it is expected that, in time, a common standard will be set by the EU. For the moment, though, you just have to do your research before you book.