When you book a reservation for a room at a hotel or resort property, you are met with a plethora of options — perhaps a standard room, a deluxe room, a premium room, an ocean view room, a garden view room, a junior suite, or even a presidential suite — as well as a plethora of rates to correspond with those options.
Should Hotel Room Category Names Be Standardized Globally?
Even worse is when an upgrade of one category is offered by a hotel or resort property, the upgrade can seem no better that the room which was originally assigned to you.
One multinational lodging company is supposedly now working on standardizing the names of hotel room categories worldwide — but the criteria as proposed by InterContinental Hotels Group “are very confusing and not very customer-oriented, being imposed by the headquarters which does not understand the actual situation of each hotels”, according to what was posted by FlyerTalk member Raynyan. “The difference between Classic and Premium is simply the size of the room and not the amenities. It is not defined by the hotel but unilaterally by IHG headquarters.”
An example of why the new standard may cause confusion is that as a result, the ANA InterContinental Tokyo hotel property “has increased its room categories from 19 to 25. If you’ve stayed at this hotel before, you’ll know that some of the very older Classic Rooms below 21F will also be given the ‘Premium’ name. What’s the ‘Premium’ ?? Crazy.”
Rental car companies have a standardized matrix of classes of vehicles called the Association of Car Rental Industry System Standards — which is more popularly known as ACRISS — and it was formed in 1989 by Avis, Budget, Europcar, and Hertz Corporation to “formulate and recommend standards for use in the design, installation and use of computerised systems operated by travel agents and others for the reservations of car rental services.” Not long after the matrix was formed, it was joined by the main computer reservation systems at the time — which are known as global distribution systems.
Final Boarding Call
Although some variations and exceptions do exist, the ACRISS coding system has been adopted worldwide to ensure that all members of the Association of Car Rental Industry System Standards display the same coding for the same vehicles in order to enable you to be better informed when comparing rates and arriving at a decision as to which vehicle is the best one for you to rent for its intended purpose — and knowing what car code letters mean provides you with a clearer idea of the vehicle class and characteristics of any model of vehicle.
Has the time come for the lodging industry to develop a similar system worldwide? Should the names of categories of hotel rooms be standardized globally; and would the experience of the consumer improve as a result? If so, what should be the minimum standards of each category of hotel room?
All photographs ©2020 by Brian Cohen.
