The World’s 50 Best Hotels to launch in 2023

Earlier on this month World’s 50 Best organization had announced that it will now be releasing World’s 50 Best Hotels, along side their better known World’s 50 Best Restaurants and World’s 50 Best Bars.

Hurray! Now we have another hotel rating system to base our vocational decisions on. But how reliable is it going to be? And do we really need one?

World's 50 Best Hotels

What hotel rating systems do already exist?

The most widely used hotel ratings use stars and diamonds to rate hotels.

The process of determining a hotel’s star rating is typically conducted by a third-party organization such as Mobil Travel Guide (yes, Michelin tire company rate restaurants and Mobil oil and gas – hotels… it all makes sense), nowadays known as Forbes Travel Guide. AAA (American Automobile Association) is also very popular hotel rating system that uses diamonds instead of stars.

These organizations send anonymous inspectors to evaluate hotels on a variety of factors, including room cleanliness and maintenance, staff friendliness and helpfulness, and the overall condition of the property.

It’s important to note that the star rating system is not uniform across all countries, and different countries may have different criteria for determining a hotel’s rating.

For example in Europe the most well-known organization to rate hotels is the Hotelstars Union. The organization was established in 2010, and currently includes 20 European countries, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The Hotelstars Union rating system uses a scale of one to five stars, with one star indicating a basic hotel and five stars indicating a luxury hotel. The criteria for determining a hotel’s rating include the quality of the accommodations, the level of service provided by staff, and the amenities offered.

Another well-known hotel rating organization in Europe is the AA Hotel and Hospitality Services, that also uses a scale of one to five stars to rate hotels.

However, several, we would even dare to say most popular European tourism destinations, do not use these systems so widely and instead prefer to use their own rating systems to classify hotels. For example, France’s hotels are rated by the Atout France, the French national tourist board, and Italy’s hotels are rated by Italian Hotel Classification, which is managed by the Italian National Tourist Board (ENIT). 

Here's a nice video to watch about the existing hotel rating systems, if you want to learn more about it.

So here comes the question: do we really need another hotel rating agency?

Well… World’s 50 Best Hotels won’t really be rating each hotel. Just like with restaurants and bars, any hotel would consider to be lucky just to make the list. So it’ll be more of an award, rather than a typical rating.

How reliable will this hotel award system be?

World’s 50 best promises it to be as reliable and objective as their other 2 lists are…

580 voters around the world, comprised of supposedly impartial industry professionals: 50% travel journalists, 30% hoteliers and 20% seasoned luxury travellers (so we are guessing, don’t expect to find any “non-luxury hotels” on the list), will vote on annual basis for the best hotel that they had supposedly visited that given year.

We’ve all heard rumours on how in reality these ratings are being made… so let’s just leave it there. Maybe it’s going to be way better? It’s a brand new listing after all! New year, new beginnings! 580 people is a lot of people after all…

The question remains nevertheless, whether another hotel rating / listing system is really needed… We’d say that it obviously is just another marketing tool. Those hotels that have already good marketing systems and important connections in place may be eligible to be “lucky” to get on the list. And good for them! Being on the list will definitely boost their occupancy during the year. Plus it’s kinda nice to have a unified list of Top Best Hotels in the whole world to aspire to visit one day.

But if you are running an exceptional, but unknown hotel with no website, no social media and no marketing in place, don’t get illusional… it’s all about branding and connections.