Star Power

Nor does Horst Schulze, despite the Wall Street Journal article. "I don't know what a six-star hotel is," Schulze says, clearly agitated. "Who assigns six stars? If people talk about six stars, they obviously don't know ratings and they don't know the business. The six-star conversation is ridiculous. It's a joke."

In the luxury universe, architectural styles, menus, and technology all change, but there is one constant, one North Star, according to the experts: service. Schulze says that the new focus on star ratings is leading many hotels to overlook this element so vital to the alchemy of a perfect hotel stay. He cites as an example the trend in the Middle East toward expensive gilded furnishings but service levels that, in his view, do not merit even five stars. "As far as five-star service, excellence, cleanliness, and exactness are concerned, they don't exist there. But what the properties do have are expensive chandeliers. Who gave them these stars?"

According to Dubai's Burj Al Arab, widely reported in the press and online to be a seven-star hotel ("the world's first seven-star hotel," according to the Dubai government's Development and Investment Authority Web site), guests and the press are to blame. "Guests, the media, and visitors to the hotel have assigned it a seven-star rating when describing the facilities, services, and exterior design," notes Anne Bleeker, a spokeswoman for Jumeirah International, which owns the property. Officially, Bleeker says, the hotel claims only five stars, bestowed by Dubai's tourism office.

Schulze says the new breed of ultraluxe hotels don't necessarily have the user in mind, which perfectly describes my experience. My palatial suite at The Setai had all the hallmarks of modern luxury—two flat-screen TVs with Bose surround sound, a top-of-the-line espresso machine, and iPods on hand—yet despite a ten-minute room orientation, I was unable to turn off the lights without triggering a "sunset" effect. And the closet was so poorly designed that I couldn't hang my clothes properly if I placed my bag on the built-in luggage rack.

"Hotels are created by developers, architects, and interior designers rather than by the customer," Schulze says. He cited a AAA Five Diamond resort in Miami where he was forced to drag the ironing board into the bathroom just to reach an outlet.

"Claiming six stars is an attempt for a hotel company to position itself above the fray," explains Chekitan Dev, a marketing professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. "I don't think of these hotels as six-star; I think of them as the new five-star. Yesterday's five-star is today's four-star. There is an increased rate of product and service obsolescence."

Which means that what was once considered special—say, a complimentary beverage or a mist of water by the pool—is now expected. The bar is constantly being raised. Dev, who is a paid consultant to several hotel chains, including One&Only, says the star system creates customer expectations that hotels fail to meet at their peril. "If you say this is a five-star, five-diamond property, you are setting certain expectations and you'd better exceed them. But mastering the basics at the highest level—doing ordinary things extraordinarily well—is a necessary precondition to going above and beyond," Dev says. "You can't play with extras like plasma screens unless you've got the basics down cold."
—Debra A. Klein