Should we get an AA or Visit Wiltshire hotel assessment?
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-10-09 07:29:58 - Graham Ellis
We chat / work with other accommodation providers around the UK to exchange experiences and best practise - and one of the Facebook groups was discussing the ranking / rating (star) system and whether it's useful to apply. Here's what I posted there - worth sharing:
We are not listed / inspected. We took a careful look a number of years ago and decided that most of our stuff is 4/5 star but one or two things that guests don't need / ask for were missing, and that would pull us down to a much lower rating. And the cost would have added several pounds per room per night. We simply don't fit proper.
We are listed with Visit Wiltshire, who changed their policy to allow self-assessed properties a couple of years back, probably because few people were going in for inspections and rankings. We find our Trip Advisor position (currently 1st of 14) and LateRooms reviews far more important in bringing in fresh guests that VisitWiltshire where we *are* now listed too - but the most important guests of all are those on recommendation and repeat business.
"Self-grading" and visitor reviews offer us the best of both worlds - they allow us to give a true picture without an expense we have to pass on; the reviews confirm that the grading we have described is indeed genuine, or perhaps even under-played.