THE owning company of Plantation Bay Resort & Spa has brought the Philippine Department of Tourism (DoT) to court over the latter’s alleged subjective and unnecessary star rating for tourist accommodations, which had downgraded the Cebu resort’s rating from five to four star.
Emmanuel Gonzalez, Plantation Bay’s founder and managing director, told TTG Asia e-Daily that there were two issues at the heart of the case: should there be a star rating system when most countries have junked it and should a government agency implement such a programme for the private sector?
Describing the star rating system as a flawed one, Gonzalez said the DoT “got incompetent bureaucrats with no understanding of hotels at all to draw up a childish and impossibly complicated checklist, which can be likened to an attempt to evaluate a Picasso by square inch of canvas, and tally up the scores to come to an overall grade for the painting”.
The DoT’s National Accommodation Standards replaces the old system with a one- to five-star rating, based on a point system that rates the quality and condition of a property’s facilities and services. The old system used to classify hotels as economy, standard, first class and deluxe and resorts as A, AA and AAA.
The Philippine Hotel Owners Association (PHOA) had earlier asked the DoT to concentrate on the physical aspects and leave out the rating of the service and guest experience as they can be “very subjective”, said board member Jose Mari del Rosario.
Bill Barnett, managing director, C9 Hotelworks hospitality consultancy, said: “Most global destinations are throwing away the star rating. It is irrelevant. A luxury boutique hotel can drop to a four-star rating by the rule of the DoT star rating.”
After a meeting with PHOA officials, tourism secretary Ramon Jimenez, Jr. wrote PHOA president Arthur Lopez on October 9 saying that he is open to suggestions on improving the rating system. He has also agreed to form a committee “to refine the existing standards, taking into consideration the geographical location and other factors that require the application of different criteria”.
