Resources on Luxury Hotels

Luxury Hotels

A luxury hotel is a is a very expensive establishment that provides paid lodging, usually on a short-term basis. Luxury hotels provide always exceptional restaurants, top beauty facilities, a swimming pool and a perfect spa. The Restaurants are often specialised in certain types of food or present a certain unifying, and often entertaining, theme. For example, luxury hotels offering mostly a selection of seafood restaurants, vegetarian restaurants and local/ foreign (ethnic) restaurants.

A luxury hotel is an elite luxury property which exhibits an exceptionally high degree of customer service and hospitality. A flawless execution of guest services will be the hotels staff's and managements main concern. A luxury hotel will commonly also feature a superb architectural interior and exterior design as well as an interesting physical location. (eg. the Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is built on an artificial island and structured in the shape of a sail of a boat).

A luxury hotel may vary greatly in character, style and theme from hotel to hotel. A luxury hotel will, however, normally be characterized by a high level of luxury, sophistication and off course price. Accommodations are first class, whether they follow a classic and traditional nature or a more minimalist and modern styling. An unmatched level of comfort will be available at a luxury hotel, as well as many personalized services and amenities.

Luxury hotels are often based in exceptionally desirable and strategic worldwide locations, from beautiful tropical islands, to snow caked mountains, to scenic lakes and rivers, to exhilarating cities.

An incomplete list of luxury hotel:

• Park Hyatt in Tokio, Japan
• Hotel George V in Paris, France
• Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin, Germany
• Burj al-Arab in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• The Oriental in Bangkok, Thailand
• Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay in Bali, Indonesia
• Halekulani in Honolulu (Ohau), Hawaii
• Four Seasons Resort in Wailea (Maui), Hawaii
• The Peninsula in Hong Kong
• The Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, California
• Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, Illinois

Hotel Classification

Stars are often used as symbols for classification purposes. In particular, a set of one to five stars is employed to categorize hotels.

Standards of classification
In some countries, there is an official body with standard criteria for classifying hotels, but in many others there is none. There have been attempts at unifying the classification system so that it becomes an internationally recognized and reliable standard but large differences exist in the quality of the accommodation and the food within one category of hotel, sometimes even in the same country.

A "five star hotel"
However, regardless of what public or private agency performs the classification, the term five star hotel is always associated with the ultimate luxury (and, by implication, expense). The lack of standardisation has allowed marketing-driven inflation, with some hotels claiming six stars;
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General meaning of rating by stars
The five categories can be described (loosely) as follows:

• * (one star) — low budget hotel; inexpensive; may not have maid service or room service.
• ** (two stars) — budget hotel; slightly more expensive; usually has maid service daily.
• *** (three stars) — middle class hotel; moderately priced; has daily maid service, room service, and may have dry-cleaning, Internet access, and a swimming pool.
• **** (four stars) — first class hotel; expensive (by middle-class standards); has all of the previously mentioned services; has many "luxury" services (for example: massages or a health spa).
• ***** (five stars) — luxury hotel; most expensive hotels/resorts in the world; numerous extras to enhance the quality of the client's stay (for example: some have private golf courses and even a small private airport).

The AAA and their affiliated bodies use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel and restaurant ratings levels.

Traditional systems rest heavily on the facilities provided, which is often disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as an elevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization.

Excerpt from "Star (classification)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Oct 2006, 11:55 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Oct 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Star_%28classification%29&oldid=84407085