How to read a hotel before you have been there

Stars are not a verdict on quality, they are a points account

In Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, hotel stars are awarded through the Hotelstars Union, an association of 22 countries with a shared catalogue of criteria. The current catalogue for 2025 to 2030 contains 239 criteria across seven areas, from reception and the guest rooms to meeting rooms and online activity.

What matters is how those turn into stars: through a points system. One star requires 95 points, three stars 270, four stars 410 and five stars 610 out of a maximum of 988. A five-star house therefore does not have to meet everything. It has to add up enough.

And now the part that surprises most people: room size is an optional criterion, not a requirement. From 14 square metres there are 10 points, from 18 square metres 15, from 22 square metres 25 and from 30 square metres 30 points. A house can leave these points out and collect them elsewhere, through conference technology, a spa offering or the number of restaurants.

In practice this means that five stars do not guarantee a large room. They guarantee that a house reaches a high total across the breadth of its facilities. A city hotel with small rooms and a large conference area and a resort with generous rooms and no meeting rooms can carry the same number of stars and be completely different stays.

Outside Europe, stars mean even less

The Hotelstars Union covers 22 European countries. France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States are not among them. France classifies through Atout France, Italy through regional tourism authorities, each with its own yardsticks. In the United States there is no state classification at all; what exists there are private systems such as the AAA Diamonds of the motoring club AAA or the stars of the Forbes Travel Guide.

So what does a booking platform show you for a hotel in Mexico or Thailand? As a rule, a rating the platform has assigned itself. Large booking sites say so openly in their own notes: national ratings from classification authorities appear for hotels in Europe and parts of Asia, and for the rest the platform assigns the rating itself. And it adds that this rating is not an assurance of any particular feature or facility.

So anyone looking at five stars on a booking site is relying, depending on the country, on an audited classification, on a private company, or on the judgement of a sales channel. The number does not tell you which of the three applies.

Why the review score barely separates anything

The second tool most people trust is the average score. Its problem is not that it is wrong. Its problem is that it no longer separates. Look around within one price bracket and you find houses between 8.4 and 9.1. That is not a decision aid, it is noise. The interesting differences between two houses do not sit in a tenth of a point.

Then there is how differently reviews come about. Some platforms only let guests review who demonstrably booked and stayed. Others let anyone write who opens an account. Both numbers look the same and mean something completely different.

Legislators have since responded, and what is prohibited there is the best indication of what was common before. Through the Omnibus Directive, the EU requires platforms to disclose whether and how they ensure that reviews come from real guests; claiming “verified” without checking is an unfair practice. In the United States, the trade regulator FTC adopted a rule in August 2024 that expressly prohibits fabricated and purchased reviews, undisclosed reviews by employees, fake independent review sites, and the suppression of negative reviews through threats.

None of this means that reviews are worthless. It means that the number is. The text underneath is not.

How I actually read reviews

I look at the average score and set it aside. After that, four things interest me.

• The middle reviews, not the extremes. Someone who awards a 10 had a lovely evening. Someone who awards a 1 had a dispute. The truth about a house sits in the reviews scoring 6 and 7, because that is where people write who make distinctions.
• Repetition rather than isolated cases. One complaint is an anecdote. The same complaint in eight reviews over six months is how the place runs.
• Fabric or operation. The most important distinction of all. Thin walls, an arterial road outside the window, the lift next to the room: that never changes. Slow service, unfriendly staff, a mediocre breakfast: that can be different in six months because there is new management. Anyone who does not draw this distinction rejects good houses over fixable faults and books bad ones despite unfixable ones.
• The date. A house that was refurbished or sold two years ago is a different house. Reviews from before that describe something that no longer exists.

What photographs reveal, and what they leave out

Hotel photographs rarely lie. They omit. That is why the most useful question is not “What can I see?” but “What can I not see?”

• Is the standard category missing? If a gallery shows five suites and not a single picture of the cheapest category, that is a statement about the cheapest category.
• Always the same corner. If a room is only shown from one angle, usually from the door diagonally towards the window, the rest of the room is the uninteresting part.
• No bathroom. Bathrooms are expensive and age visibly. Missing bathroom photographs in a house that shows everything else point to how recently it was refurbished.
• Wide angle and time of day. A very wide-angle lens turns 18 square metres into a hall, and a pool always looks good at dusk. Look for the same spot in guest photographs taken in daylight.
• The view out of the window. If not one picture looks out of the room, there is a reason for that.

Four signals you can check yourself

• When it was refurbished, and what. “Refurbished 2024” may mean the lobby and not the rooms. Ask which categories were involved.
• A change of operator. If a house has changed brand, everything older says little. Conversely, the same management over years with staff who are praised again and again is a strong sign, because staff stability in this industry is rare and expensive.
• How many rooms. A house with 40 rooms can know guests by name. One with 400 cannot, but it has more choice of restaurants and facilities. Both are legitimate, but it is a decision and not a question of quality.
• What the rate includes. Two houses with the same room price do not cost the same if one includes breakfast, water and the transfer and the other does not. The most common arithmetic mistake when comparing.

The test that takes ten minutes

The most telling signal comes from writing to the house. Not through a contact form, but to the reservations address, with three specific questions:

• Which room categories were refurbished most recently, and when?
• Which rooms in category X face the quiet side?
• What is included in the rate and what is added on site?

The reply is the actual test. If it arrives within a day, answers all three questions specifically and names floors or room numbers, then someone there knows their house and takes guests seriously. If a boilerplate paragraph with a booking link arrives, you have learned something too, namely what the service on site will look like.

A house that does not reply before you book will not reply when you are there and need something.

Sources

• Hotelstars Union, catalogue of criteria 2025–2030 and country overview, hotelstars.eu
• Hotels.com, explanation of how star ratings are assigned
• Federal Trade Commission, Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, August 2024
• Directive (EU) 2019/2161 (Omnibus Directive), disclosure obligations for reviews
• Hospitality Net, overview of national classification systems