NAPLES, FL—Under a canopy of stars and glittering chandeliers beachside at host hotel The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, luxury arbiter Forbes Travel Guide (FTG) last month revealed its 57th list of worldwide Star Rating recipients before an elegant assembly of hoteliers representing dozens of the hotels cited.
“We are delighted to recognize the 2015 Star Rating recipients, an incredible group of hotels, restaurants and spas,” said Jerry Inzerillo, CEO of Forbes Travel Guide. “These properties set a new standard of excellence for hospitality worldwide at an exciting moment in the global growth of luxury hospitality and for our Star Rating system.”
This year’s Forbes Travel Guide list includes 18 new Five-Star hotels, 46 new Four-Star hotels and 26 new hotels in its Recommended category.
The number of Five-Star hotels now totals 115—the most in FTG’s history—and recognizes the increasing presence of luxury accommodations and facilities throughout the world. It also pairs with Inzerillo’s goal to bring the brand global.
This year, FTG added its first star-rated properties in Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, Japan and Thailand. Several brands could tout their first Five-Star hotel including Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Langham Hotels & Resorts and Hyatt. Properties earning the honor for those brands are Conrad Macao, Cotai Central; The Langham, Hong Kong; and Park Hyatt Aviara Resort in Carlsbad, CA.
Also named were 10 new Five-Star restaurants and seven new spas, bringing the totals in those categories to 55 and 48, respectively.
And, for the first time, two properties—Wynn Macau and Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong—earned the “Quintuple Five-Star” distinction, with both receiving a Five-Star rating for their hotel, three restaurants and spa.
Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI, earned a triple Five-Star designation for the hotel, its spa and its Seasons restaurant. Dan Hostettler, president and group managing director of Ocean House Management, LLC, noted the property was “thrilled and humbled to be recognized by Forbes.”
For Stephen Johnston, managing director and general manager of the Five-Star Boston Harbor Hotel, achieving the designation for the eighth year in a row impacts not only consumer impressions of a property, but the operational side as well.
“From the point of view of our associates, there’s nothing more important. It creates this amazing sense of pride, achievement and togetherness. There’s no level or department or person within the hotel, front of house or back of house, who isn’t significantly impacted by all of the work that we put into achieving this. This is central to everything we do. We talk about Forbes and standards every day of the year. It’s huge to us,” said Johnston, noting his 230-room property is one of only three Boston hotels to achieve Five-Star status.
Kyle Whyard knows how difficult that can be. Although the Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, MT, where Whyard is general manager, this year earned its first Four-Star rating from FTG, he is intent on adding one more.
“Being in the company of so many other great properties, of course, we were very excited to achieve a Four-Star rating, but that then gives us the room to grow and the room to work toward the Five Stars. Ultimately, that’s the goal,” he said.
Triple Creek Ranch offers 24 cabins of one to three bedrooms where, said Whyard, “We want to give people the Montana experience, but do it luxuriously. We don’t want you to sleep in a tent on the ground, waking up cold and your back’s aching. We want you to go and get dirty, go have fun all day long, then come back to a wonderful meal; a nice, comfortable log bed; and a wood-burning fireplace,” he said, adding, “It’s a much more casual atmosphere. It’s not pretentious whatsoever, but it is all of the highest quality and service.”
Forbes Travel Guide recognized a total of 336 Four-Star hotels, 192 Four-Star restaurants and 163 Four-Star spas.
David Storm, president/CEO of Providence Hospitality Partners, lauded the associates at Five-Star winner The Point in Saranac Lake, NY. “To receive the Forbes Five-Star award is a celebration of our service culture, and a testimony to the genuine care and concern shown to each guest by the world-class staff at The Point,” he said.
This year’s event held special significance for Virgil Napier, director of sales and marketing for Rosewood at Baha Mar, which is under construction in the Bahamas and slated to open later this month with 190 guestrooms and suites.
For the first time in Rosewood Hotels & Resorts’ history, it achieved three new Five-Star hotels in one year: Rosewood Mayakoba, Playa del Carmen, Mexico; Jumby Bay, A Rosewood Resort, Antigua; and Rosewood Sand Hill, Menlo Park, CA.
And, Napier is hoping the Baha Mar hotel will make the cut for 2016.
“The biggest benefit of earning a Five-Star award—it’s not given, you have to earn it—is that it’s an advocacy of voice. It’s an international designation that allows clients, guests and ‘family members’ [associates]to know there is an ultra-luxury standard that will be set in both service and amenities. That translates into a premium from a room-rate perspective, and it showcases that, as a hotelier, you are doing what you say you are going to do and you’re the best at doing it,” said Napier.
Inzerillo, a veteran hotelier named as Forbes Travel Guide’s CEO almost a year ago, is determined to get the message across that FTG and its rating system do, indeed, represent the best of the best.
“We believe that you need a global platform and a unified voice among the innkeeper community, inclusive of the restaurant community, spa, health and wellness,” said Inzerillo, in explaining FTG’s expansion.
Cutting through the clutter of other online hotel ratings systems, particularly those that are driven by guest ratings, is another objective. “The industry is asking for benchmarks that are fair, equitable and apply to everyone. If we can establish those benchmarks, that will allow us to go to the consumer and say, ‘This is the Olympic gold medal, the Oscar. This is not the People’s Choice Awards,” said the CEO.
Originally launched in 1958 as Mobil Travel Guide, FTG benefits out of the gate in going global, as most people worldwide understand the value inherent in something described as five-star, be it an Army general or a restaurant. It also has nearly six decades of existence and, said Inzerillo, has been known as “extremely” trustworthy.
“It was the basis of how consumers and many travel agents made their decisions… In order to take it global, we know it can’t be a business for the business. Our goal now is to make ourselves the most reliable source in terms of the consumer. We need a broader distribution platform, and we feel that’s satisfied with our partners at Forbes because of their global expansion. We don’t have to go out and build that organically,” said the executive.
As a hotelier for more that 40 years, Inzerillo feels he understands industry dynamics and what is valid, and can speak to the global luxury hotel community as a peer.
“I know what they need to serve their guests, having done it for 48 years. And, they know that I know it so I’m going to be fair in how we do those standards,” said the CEO.
Toward this, FTG has created a Standards Advisory Committee made up of leading hoteliers. It will support the work of a team of inspectors who anonymously evaluate up to 800 standards at properties worldwide to determine their rating position.
At the event, Forbes Travel Guide also presented a list of 100 Recommended hotels and 60 Recommended restaurants in the markets it rates: the United States; Canada; Mexico; the Caribbean; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil; Costa Rica; London; Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai and Guangzhou, China; Tokyo; Bangkok, Thailand;
and Singapore. HB