The Travel Detective

Travel Detective Blog: Why I Don’t Follow Hotel & Airline Ratings

Locations in this article:  Chicago, IL San Francisco, CA

Every week it seems that a hotel or airline is bragging about a different ranking and reward. Are these listing any more than PR fluff or should they be considered when planning a vacation? The Travel Detective doesn’t follow these rankings, instead he has some new criteria for you to use.

Every time an airline advertises that its the most punctual airline or that its rated the number one in airline in quality ratings, no one stops to ask the real questions: What exactly goes into those surveys?  What’s the criterion used by these organizations to determine these ratings?

For example, in the hotel ratings you’ve heard about 5 star and 5 diamonds.
If my hotel has a golf course, which earns it 5 stars, why is that a good rating for me if I don’t like to golf?

In many countries around the world the star rating has nothing to do with the quality of the hotel or its services, but it has to do with a tax designation of the rate the hotel is charging.  If you are the most expensive hotel in town, it has no bearing on whether it’s the best hotel.

The most recent quality ratings for airlines just came out, and they surveyed 65 airline industry experts to find out what consumers would rate as important.  Then later they surveyed 766 frequent fliers. Their priorities were the same.

Here’s the thing: when you’re flying American Airlines, are you really flying United Airlines? It could be United Express or even Colgan Air, and no one knows.

How do you break apart airlines and say whether they’re good or bad?  It’s a very incomplete picture.

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