The outdated hotel ratings scheme was the focus of discussion at the AGM of the Irish Hotels Federation at the Slieve Russell Hotel in Cavan yesterday.
There are draft proposals to replace the one-to five star category ratings by Fáilte Ireland, with a new design hotel category and a merger with the Europewide star rating system, the Hotelstars Union.
There are currently 833 hotels and 64,003 rooms in Ireland, and the ratings system will be revisited after Fáilte Ireland completes a new accommodation register to include AirBnB properties.
Hotelstars currently has 22,000 classified hotels or 1.2 million classified hotel rooms in its member countries Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
It was founded in 2009 with seven countries aiming to standardise and unify hotel star ratings across Europe and has been operating as an association under Belgian law with its headquarters in Brussels since 2021.
The Union’s goal is “to create a harmonised system that allows for a consistent and comparable assessment of hotels throughout Europe.”
Issues such as changes to employment legislation and the new minimum wage dominated the discussion. Updated data shows that the wage bill now costs 47pc of hotel turnover.
While 12pc of hotel rooms are currently contracted out to the government, there were no motions before the floor and no attempts to raise the matter at the AGM.
