Canada shafted in CAA/AAA new hotel ratings? Maybe not, it seems....

Okay. Finally I'm starting to understand.

An item in USA Today by hotel expert Barbara De Lollis says The American Automobile Association has put out its list of five-diamond rated hotels in North America for 2011. There are 124 hotels on the list, she said. There are something like 20 in California, nine in Las Vegas and eight in New York City, she said. The state of Connecticut has two.

Canada? One.

Yep, one. In this ENTIRE country, stretching from Newfoundland to the coasts of B.C., from Niagara Falls to Iqualuit, there is only ONE SINGLE HOTEL IN THIS ENTIRE COUNTRY that gets a top rating.

For the record, it's the Four Seasons in Whistler, (pictured at left in all her winter glory) and good for them. But just one for Canada?

Earlier, I wrote in this space that maybe the Americans were mad at us - again - and sent all their white-glove experts to wreak havoc on our tourism industry or that, perhaps our hotels just suck. I was joking for the most part but, apparently, and this is hard for a journalist to admit, I was wrong.

Ian Jack, the very helpful spokesman for the CAA, tells me it's a very thorough process to give out the five (and four and three and two and one-diamond) awards, and that there are six evaluators stationed in Canada.

"We're not being ignored," he said. "It's not like there's some guy down in New Mexico that makes it up."

Jack said there was only one Canadian five-diamond property last year, so we shouldn't feel too badly. He also pointed out Canada has 141 places in the 4-diamond category. That's 5.7 per cent of all Canadian properties with a 4-diamond rating; higher than the 3.9 per cent of all properties in the U.S.

"We'd like to see more five-diamond properties in Canada, sure," Jack told me. "I'm told a couple just missed."

I'd put a few of those on my personal list. The Wickaninnish in Tofino, B.C. is a marvel that consistently gets great reviews in the glossy travel magazines. Ditto for the historic and spectacular Auberge Saint Antoine in Quebec City (see photo at right) Both were in the four-diamond category and might have been in the near-five category.

The Hazelton Hotel in Toronto just the other day was named to travel writer Andrew Harper's top list for all the world, which is quite something. I didn't see it on the AAA/CAA list, which surprises me. But they might not have been open in time for the rating.

Anyway, in addition to performing well in the four-diamond hotel grouping, Jack said Canadian restaurants put up a strong showing, with six food places garnering five-diamonds. That's more than 10 per cent of the 55 handed out to restaurants in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean, so obviously we're doing something right.

For the record, the six restaurants getting top awards from the AAA/CAA folks were Eden at the Rimrock Resort Hotel in Banff, Lumiere in Vancouver, LeBaccara in Gatineau, Quebec, Nuances and Restaurant Toque in Montreal and Langdon Hall Dining Room & Terrace in Cambridge, Ontario, featured not long ago in a story in Star Travel by Noah Richler.

For the record, however, I gotta swallow my Ontario/Toronto pride and note that this is THREE restaurant awards for Quebec versus ONE for Ontario. And TWO for Montreal compared to ZERO for Toronto.

Wait 'til they hear about this in La Belle Province.

 

 

Comments

[Znoosle]

You display the typically Canuck inferiority complex. So knee jerk that it's sad. In fact the hackneyed examples you strut of Canadian cultural achievements (Jim Carrey?) strike me as so trite as to be utterly insincere (this is a blog post after all not a real story). I am glad that the new younger generation of Canadians finds your pointless distress about a foreign nation covering its own foreign news (why should the AAA rank Canadian hotels?) quite alien.

[GES]

This really has nothing to do with hotels, per se, it's just part of a wider reality. Most American media seems to have little awareness of Canada or any interest in it save for the occasional slapdash story, usually with a title that either contains a pun on the phrase "Oh, Canada", an "eh?" postfix, or both. Quite disgustingly the death of a Toronto police officer earlier this week was actually played off as a humour story on some US sites. You know, because it's so amusingly Canadian to get run down by a snowplow, eh? Oh, Canada, when are you going to give your cops guns to defend themselves with, eh?

Another less depressing example is the MSNBC.com travel section, which is broken into destinations by world regions. Under the "U.S. and Canada" destination section there are currently 21 articles and 2 slideshows featuring travel destinations. Any guess how many of those 23 features are for destinations located in Canada? If you guessed "zero"... you win!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6559155/ns/travel-destination_travel

[Mr. Art T. Avler]

what about the post hotel in Lake Lousy

[Ivan]

Those rating systems are pretty meaningless. A friend owns this amazing B&B that is on a red PEI cliff overlooking the ocean. The reason one rating group gave for not giving her their highest rating? The driveway was not paved. With the choice of destroying her property with paving equipment and asphalt, she opted to remove her property from all rating systems.

[Andrew Paris]

The only first class thing about Toronto is our arrogance in thinking we are a world class city. The money here is tacky and not classy.

[SloMo]

What the CAA official should have told you is that the rating system is pages and pages of criteria that have to do with the hotel's facilities/amenities and furnishings, staffing levels and hours of the day staff are on duty, service levels and hours of operation of various outlets, including food and beverage. A couple of examples: Most hotels choose to not have hot kitchen items available overnight (NOT pre-prepared but reheated food. You actually have to have kitchen staff on duty preparing it). Most hotels don't have Concierge/Door staff on overnight. The hotels that get 5 Diamond Ratings usually have these 2 examples. There are many more that, for budget reasons, most Canadian (and US For that matter) hotels don't bother with as the added cost to ensure they get the 5th Diamond aren't worth it for the hotel's bottom line. You will get FANTASTIC experiences at the properties you mentioned and hundreds more in Canada. Travellers will still get a 5 DIAMOND EXPERIENCE (unless they have to have cooked food at 3am).

[Peter Conway]

Having been a Hotelier for the past 26 years and had worked for the likes of Ritz Carlton and Conrad brands, I find it amusing that CAA/AAA hasn't recognized Canada in their ratings system. I interviewed with AAA in 2008 for a position that would eventually grade all hotels and restaurants in Florida. To my amaze, all 4 and 5 star properties are ONLY given to senior Management from NYC to rate. It is their "Bonus" for working hard throughout the year, and given free weekend getaways to properties throughout the USA and Canada. So Kudos to all those hotels that work hard to maintain standards, train their staff and hope for the best. Unfortunately, it boils down to White Collar management on a free weekend getaway.....hoping to get a pair of .99 cent slippers at turn down time.

[Gregory]

Going through last year's CAA TourBook, I noticed that between Calgary, Banff and Lake Louise they list 8 hotels having 4 diamonds. In the rest of Alberta they list just one such hotel in Edmonton and none in Saskatchewan or Manitoba.
They display a similar results for restaurants.
It is quite possible that there is such a difference between the prairie cities and mountain resorts; or just perhaps they had different inspectors visiting on different days with different checklists.

[Robin Rosner]

Greetings from the States...and a AAA member.
I don't get it either as I know there are some special places in TO, though my favorite forever is the Sheraton Centre. Frankly it doesn't bother me about the star ratings, because I have come to realize it may be a status thing, but a 5 star hotel will be way more expensive, and potentially snobby...I'll take a 3 or 4 star place that will allow my canine daughter to stay with me any day. Probably the rating system is as objective as they might make it, and there's probably a list of things to check for...you miss on one, you could be a 4 star and have missed by one point.
The important thing is we know where the good places are and continue to talk them up and patronize them. I think any rating system is amusing...but the source I trust most is ME. Who knows when a reviewer has visited a place? By time that review gets printed it could be stale and untrue anyhow.

[Fiona Lowther]

I have checked the criteria list for AAA and all I can think is that their listings are at least partly based on things that a lot of travelers are not used to, don't require, and further, don't want to pay extra for. I am an American (U.S.), a former travel agent, a former NOMADS member, a not-wealthy widow, and a lover of Canada. The places my late husband and I liked to stay were not the poshest -- but are places we would've stayed even if we were the world's richest couple, or had our stay been free.
We liked to stay at the old Windsor Arms in Toronto. After my husband's death, I spent one Christmas weekend at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. I wanted for nothing. If I were going back to Montreal, I would stay at the QE again. Under the rule of If it ain't broke, don't fix it, if I am perfectly happy at one hotel, why would I take a chance and stay at another hotel just to see if it is "better"? If I'm perfectly and totally happy in one place, why look for another place? Adam and Eve had everything they needed in Eden, and they blew it trying to improve on perfection.
Oh, and as for restaurants, the Rugby Grille in the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan (a few miles north of Detroit) is, as the French say, worth the detour. The food is heavenly, the ambience superb and the wait staff is unequaled.
I have eaten in many restaurants where the food is great, the surroundings are great and the wait staff leaves nothing to be desired. But at the Rugby, the daytime wait staff members are not just professionally helpful and welcoming; they really DO like people, and it shows.
I would be much more interested in a list that informed travelers of the faults of some of the more well-known hotels/restaurants.