Articles > One Star Too Many?

As I got up from the breakfast-table in the vast, chandelier-dotted dining room at St Moritz’s most distinguished hotel to collect my soft-boiled Swiss egg, my napkin slipped towards the thick red carpet. Quick as a flash, Battista, my bespectacled waiter, dived like a cricket slip-fielder and almost caught it before it hit the ground. This, it occurred to me, was something which would probably only happen at a five-star hotel like the Kulm. At dinner that night, I only had to reach for the wine bottle when the head waiter raced across to pour it for me. These people are trained to pamper. And there are a lot of them. A high ratio of staff to guests is a key component of the 5-star treatment. Hence my eagle-eyed, fleet-of-foot waiter.

Being pampered, of course, is one of the main reasons why people book into luxury hotels, and it would be churlish to resent it. Nevertheless, when I transferred to the Schweizerhof Hotel just down the road - a mere four-star operation - I felt a guilty sense of relief. Now I could relax without worrying whether the staff were constantly worrying about my welfare. Which led me to wonder whether some travellers are more suited to 5-star treatment than others. Few travellers would turn down the chance of first-class air travel, but in a hotel, dare I say it, some might find that five stars is a star too many.

When I was young, freshly married and impecunious, my ex-wife and I enjoyed a perfectly nice honeymoon at then one-star Tannenhof in Zermatt. I discussed this with Tony Schulz, General Manager of the Swiss Travel Service, my dinner companion that night at the Schweizerhof. He too had just experienced high-powered pampering at the Kulm.

“What a relief,” he agreed, relaxing in a sweater and slacks in the smaller, more intimately lit restaurant. “Here there’s a casual elegance. I don’t have to wear a tie or have people hovering round me, however well-intentioned. It just makes me nervous. I like staff to be around when I need them, but not all the time”.

We tried the napkin test: my napkin fluttered to the ground and stayed there until I picked it up. Colin Cowdrey, slip catcher extraordinaire, where were you when I needed you? “What would you expect from a one-star hotel?” I asked Schulz. “Nothing” he said. “Except perhaps clean sheets.” “Do you think perhaps there are three star people, four star people and five star people?” I suggested.

“I think some guests love all the attention they get at a five-star hotel, but it makes other people nervous. One problem is that the management of a five-star hotel is probably anxious about relaxing the rules for more casual guests - like the Americans for example - in case they upset their more formal European guests who would be horrified to find some diners in the restaurant not wearing ties.”

Urs Hoehener, the amiable director of the Schweizerhof, sympathises. “We try to make guests feel totally relaxed here,” he says. “In the evening they can wear what they want. We rely on their discretion and nobody ever comes into the restaurant in inappropriate dress - shorts for example.”

Olga Polizzi, who owns the celebrated Tresanton Hotel in Cornwall and recently opened the 5-star St David’s Hotel in Cardiff with her brother Rocco Forte says: “There is a very fine line between good service and feeling oppressed. As a guest I hate having staff hovering over me. It’s terribly important for people to be able to relax. I do like to pour my own water, for example, without having a waiter rushing over to pour it for me. I wouldn’t dream of insisting on guests at the Trensanton having to wear a tie, or even a jacket for that matter, although I was once tempted to ask a man dressed in a dirty T-shirt to change into something a little more appropriate.” (Her nerve failed her.) “I think as the younger crowd takes over, the need to wear ties and jackets will diminish. It’s the older clients who sometimes feel threatened by change.”

The star-system varies from country to country. In Switzerland five-star (luxury) hotels must have a minimum of 35 rooms of which at least 70% must be large, plus and a staff ratio of one for every four or five guests. A four star (first-class) hotel must have 25 rooms and a slightly lower staff to guest ratio. A three-star (good “middle class”) hotel need only have 10 rooms, with one member of staff for each 10 guests or so. Two stars mean the hotel is “comfortable” with a minimum of five rooms and a guest to staff ratio of 12 (business hotel) or 16 (holiday hotel). A one-star (simple) hotel can get away with only five rooms and no staff-to-guest ratio is stipulated.

All 3, 4 and 5 star hotels in Switzerland must have a bath or shower A bath option is compulsory in 90% of five-star hotel rooms, 50% of four-star rooms and 20% of three-star rooms. In France, where the maximum number of stars is four (although their 4 Star deluxe is effectively a 5-star rating) the classification - policed by the préfecture in each département - is similar.

In theory, British hoteliers can give themselves as many stars as they like. Unless they are linked to a regulatory body such as the Automobile Association, it can be quite arbitrary. “A small, clean hotel with no stars at all, serving an excellent breakfast, can be better value than a poor one or two star hotel” says Michael Bevans, owner of a three-star hotel, the Linthwaite House Hotel in Britain’s Lake District at Bowness-on-Windermere. “Not every hotelier is anxious to push his star rating up. You would probably please people more by giving them exceptional service at a two star hotel than shoddy service at a three star hotel. Sometimes less is more.

“As for your napkin test: if you dropped one at my hotel, it would, of course be picked up - once one of my staff had spotted it!” Ah, my dear Michael, but by then – like Olga Polizzi serving her own water – I should have happily bent to retrieve it for myself. Unlike five-star guests, mere three or four star chaps like me are not proud.

Articles

• More from Arnie Wilson