Rude Hotels by Vir Sanghvi: New achievement unlocked
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If you are travelling to a new city, how do you find a good hotel to stay in? Until a year ago, the short answer was: You take your chances and leave it to fate.
One of the extraordinary things about the hospitality industry is that while there is no shortage of critical information about restaurants, there is virtually nothing like that about hotels.
For instance, if you want to choose a good restaurant in India, you can refer to the Culinary Culture star ratings or perhaps look at something like the Condé Nast Traveller list of top restaurants. But if you are looking for a good hotel, there is nothing that will help you make an informed decision. There are no hotel critics who do the same job as restaurant critics. The so-called three- to five-star rating system is mechanical and meaningless. And nearly all the lists of best hotels that are produced by various publications or so-called industry bodies are either incestuously directed at the industry, not at consumers, or are money-making operations that are largely advertising-driven.
This is not just an Indian phenomenon. All over the world, you could get unbiased ratings of restaurants from critics or, if you were looking for the gold standard, from the Michelin guide. But it was never the same for hotels.
Over the last year, this has finally changed. Just as restaurants have Michelin stars, there is now a Michelin guide to hotels, done to the same high standards as the restaurant guide. And just as you have the annual list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, there is now a similar ranking of the world’s hotels.
Both developments will transform the hotel industry forever, giving us independent ratings and rankings that guests can refer to before booking their stays. Chefs and restaurants spend years struggling to get a Michelin star; now hotels will do the same. Top restaurants live in fear of losing their stars; now, the same will apply to hotels. A place in the Worlds 50 Best list can make a restaurant’s fortune. The same principle will now apply to hotels.
Michelin’s restaurant ratings have taken decades to reach the stature they now have: The most respected plaudits in the food world. So, when Michelin announced that it was going to do the same thing for hotels (They call them ‘keys’ to distinguish them from the restaurant stars) the hotel business, unused to ratings it could not influence or buy, was stunned. Hoteliers waited anxiously to see how their properties would fare.
Last week, Michelin announced its ratings of UK hotels. It had already done the same for Italy, Japan, Thailand France and a few other countries, and there was speculation that Michelin would restrict itself to the famous grand hotels and the usual big names. In fact, the list of London keys is eminently fair and balanced. While Claridges, the Four Seasons, the Savoy and the Connaught are among those that get the top ranking of three keys, the list does hold surprises. Many small hotels run by Firmdale, a family-owned company, make the list with two stars. So do hotels that are not exactly household names, such as the Beaumont and Twenty Two. At the one-key level, the list is full of independent hotels that many people had not noticed or recognised before.
The methodology is pretty much the same as the one Michelin applies to restaurants. Anonymous inspectors check into the hotels and rate them on the basis of comfort, luxury, flair, service and the other things that hotel guests look for. Just as restaurants do not know when they are being rated, neither do the hotels.
The list has had a huge impact, not just because Michelin has massive credibility, but also because no other organisation is willing to spend the equivalent of tens of crores of rupees rating hotels in a single country. Michelin inspectors pay the eye-watering prices that London hotels charge (rates at the top hotels start at around ₹1.2 lakh per night) pay for the super-expensive meals at the hotel restaurants (nearly always much more than similar meals at a non-hotel restaurant would cost) and often go back to each hotel more than once to check whether their initial impressions were accurate.
Michelin has been rating restaurants for decades, but the hotel list is the brainchild of Gwendal Poullennec, the young, multilingual French director of the guide, who has overseen the recent, remarkable transformation of Michelin: The shift into more non-European countries, the greater recognition for non-French cuisines, and the green stars to reward sustainable restaurants.
I spoke to him right after the small event at London’s Somerset house, where Gwendal revealed the list to an audience of mostly overwhelmed and emotional hoteliers.
Poullennec reckons that the Michelin hotel keys come at the crucial moment for the hospitality industry. More and more of us are booking hotels on websites either run by hotel companies or by aggregators. Because the sites only want you to make them money, they have no real desire or obligation to tell you the truth or to describe the product honestly. Often, they will pressure you by saying things like ‘only two rooms left’ even if that is not necessarily the truth. As Poullennec says, you never know what is really behind the screen.
There are no dependable, independently run and credible websites or publications that can help you make an informed decision. Moreover, almost every organisation that writes about hotels depends on free stays, or heavily discounted rates.
Michelin, on the other hand, pays full price and never lets hoteliers know when its inspectors will check in.
Because most of us make our decisions based on what we read on the net, a big or cash-rich hotel company will spend a lot of money to ensure that its hotels come up first on your screen in any search and that positive ‘reviews’ pop up. Smaller companies and independent hotels remain at a huge disadvantage. Quality does not automatically show up on the Internet and nor does the technology to discover it exist. This is one reason why the hotel business is more and more dominated by the big chains, and why standards are not necessarily as high as they should be. (Contrast this with the restaurant sector, where few chain restaurants exist at the top level.)
Within the industry, it is well known that lists produced by publications can easily be manipulated by those with large advertising budgets. It is as well known that many lists will charge for inclusion or at, the very least, will not include a hotel that is not a potential advertiser.
Michelin aims to create a level playing field by breaking through the power of the big boys and their technological advantages. A small hotel has as much chance of getting on the list as a large property owned by multinational chains or billionaires. All that matters is quality.
Over the last few years Michelin’s influence has been rivalled by the list of the World’s 50 Best restaurants. Michelin continues to be the gold standard for foodies and chefs, but a place on the 50 Best list guarantees fame and commercial success for a restaurant. And 50 Best has sometimes been quicker than Michelin to recognise great restaurants. Both El Bulli and Noma hit the top of the list before Michelin gave them their three stars.
Now, 50 Best has produced its own hotel list. Unlike Michelin and its complex system of anonymous inspectors and rigorous inspections, 50 Best operates on the same principle as the Golden Globes or the Oscars, by relying on the votes of an academy. The restaurant academy consists of unpaid foodies and influencers whose identities are supposed to be secret. That principle has been extended to the hotel list, though the voters for the restaurant list and the hotel list are different.
I spoke to Emma Sleight, who is head of content for the 50 Best Hotels list, and she emphasised that 50 Best does not tell its voters who to vote for. The choices are “up to each individual voter to decide and we allow the experts to make up their own minds. We simply collate their views”.
So, two very different approaches to subjecting hotels to the kind of scrutiny they have never faced before. But both the ratings will make a huge difference to the industry in the future.
As Poullennec says, “We are always clear. Our focus is the consumer. Michelin’s purpose is to make sure that every individual guest has all the information needed to find the perfect hotel. That is our mission.”
Michelin has no immediate plans to bring the ratings to India, but 50 Best has already included one Indian hotel – the excellent Sujan leopard camp and resort in Jawai. Perhaps, as time goes on, more Indian hotels will make the cut.
