When searching for a hotel recently, the intrepid editor of IndependentTraveler.com noticed hotel star ratings sometimes varied by a 'star' or more when switching from one booking engine to another.
If hotel ratings can fluctuate just by typing in a different URL, what's the point?
On the whole, star ratings can be very useful, if you're just crashing for a few hours during a road trip, you don't need many amenities, and probably don't want to pay for them either. But if you are on your only real vacation of the year and will be staying several days, you don't want a flea-pit with dark rooms, poor service and, worst of all, bad (or no) coffee. Star ratings can give you a very quick sense of what the room at the inn is really like.
So how can there be so much variation from one site to the next? Was the inspector in a foul mood? Was the hotel cleaning staff out sick with a rampant cold? Was the hotel just having an off day? If the reviews are suspiciously good, did the hotel know the inspector was coming, or just show them the best room? I suspect that reviewers are underpaid and overworked - did they even stay at the hotel, or did they just scan the place and move on to the next one?
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Source - MSNBC
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