Who awards hotel star ratings, and do they mean anything?
It depends entirely on the country — and the crucial point is that there is no international standard, so a five-star hotel in one country is not comparable with a five-star hotel in another.
The three arrangements in use:
Statutory national schemes. Some countries require hotels to be classified by a government body, with legally defined criteria and inspection. Ratings are consistent within that country and enforceable.
Voluntary national schemes. Operated by a tourist board or motoring organisation, with inspection and published criteria, but participation is optional — so an excellent hotel may have no rating simply because it declined to join, which means the absence of stars tells you very little.
Self-declared or platform ratings. The hotel or a booking site assigns stars with no independent verification at all. This is common, and it is where the rating is closest to meaningless.
What criteria typically measure — and why that is the real limitation. Rating schemes generally assess facilities, because facilities are objectively checkable: whether there is a restaurant, room service hours, lift provision, minimum room sizes, en-suite arrangements, reception staffing.
They largely do not measure quality of experience — cleanliness standards vary, service attitude is not captured, and location is irrelevant to the score. So a hotel can hold a high rating by having the required facilities while being unpleasant, and a superb small guesthouse can rate low simply because it lacks a restaurant and a lift.
This is why an excellent boutique hotel frequently shows three stars and a mediocre business hotel shows four.
What is more informative:
Recent guest reviews, read for recurring specifics rather than for the average score. Repeated mentions of the same problem are the signal.
Photographs from guests rather than from the hotel.
The location on a map, checked yourself.
What is included, since the rate and the inclusions differ more than the stars do.
Hostel and B&B schemes operate separately, and apartment gradings differ again.
Some booking platforms mix official ratings and their own assessments without distinguishing them.