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Dinner at Penalva da Graca
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A busy day during the high season.
WE LOVE RIDING THE TRAM 28
Lisbon's popular Tram 28 is only 3 minutes from Tins Lisbon. Here is all you need to know.
Why Tings Lisbon only has One Star.
We don't care about stars!
In 2009 we left Copenhagen with a business plan for a small hotel which we had been working on since our return from a year-around-the-world in 2001.
We had no experience at all in the hotel business. BUT we had stayed in around 2,000 hotels all over the world and Knew what liked: Helga’s Foley in Kandy in Sri Lanka, Xavier’s Country House in Chulumani in Bolivia, Aurora Inn – Chez Sylvie in Yangon, Myanmar and a few other cozy gems that had found their ways to our favourite-places-to-stay-around-the-world list: Not because stars, but because of their attitude, charm, ambiance, location and the basic services we find relevant.
And most important: because of all the fantastic people we have met there. That’s what we care about – NOT the official stars that is a MUST if you want to open a hotel in Lisbon.
.... because star ratings are “not regulated in a consistent way across the industry,” said Yngvar Stray, the general manager of Capella Singapore.
Booking.com said its stars are designated by the hotels themselves. Forbes Travel Guide, however, uses professional, anonymous inspectors who access “900 objective stands,” according to its website. And to add to the confusion, Frommer’s website states its star ratings only go from one (“recommended”) to three stars (“exceptional”).
The sheer number of companies that award stars isn’t helping.
Decades ago, few companies handed out stars — or diamonds, as the American Automobile Association calls its ratings. But now, countless magazines, guidebooks and websites issue them.
Booking.com said its stars are designated by the hotels themselves. Forbes Travel Guide, however, uses professional, anonymous inspectors who access “900 objective stands,” according to its website. And to add to the confusion, Frommer’s website states its star ratings only go from one (“recommended”) to three stars (“exceptional”).
The sheer number of companies that award stars isn’t helping.
Decades ago, few companies handed out stars — or diamonds, as the American Automobile Association calls its ratings. But now, countless magazines, guidebooks and websites issue them.
Category & stars - a blast from the past?
Less than 20% of TripAdvisor’s top ranking hotels in Bangkok are officially star rated!!!
I was working from my bed in a starless hotel in Bangkok when by coincidence I stumbled upon an article on CNBC about the Hotel Star ranking systems around the world.
I couldn’t help thinking about our own hassles with useless Hotels Stars and categories.
The first time was when we arrived in Nepal to start Tings Guest House in 2009 and the Ministry of Tourism only allowed foreigners to run hotels. We knew that people eventually would call us Tings and didn’t care and changed the name to Tings Kathmandu.
To get the licence we only had to forward a business plan and get it approved. Fantastic! Our background is making business plans and the last one we had made was for our own Tings project.
No, no sir. You have to make this one, said the office guy and took a dummy plan from his drawer – written in Nepalese of course… and handed it to us.
Long story short – he had a small side business making business plans for foreigners like us, who didn’t read or write Nepali. So we paid him a small fee to make the plan.
Years later we found out that the so-called plan Annette signed was for another company that had nothing to do with Hospitality – where she was CEO.
No hotel in Lisbon without an official star!
The second time was here in Lisbon – probably the most hyped City in Europe when we started up in 2015.
The first thing we did was ask around in the hospitality circles: Forget it! Hotel Licences are too complicated, too much bureaucracy and too expensive they all said when we asked about getting a Hotel License. Instead they recommended us to get a Hostel or an Alojamento Local (AL) licence which can get you in business within a week.
We hate sleeping in bunk beds surrounded by farting and snoring people. And AL only allows 9 rooms which is not profitable. Then people suggested we bend the rules by making two ALs because our house has several entrances. But we didn’t want to cheat.
The only thing is that in Portugal you can not run a hotel without joining the star category system. So it was take or leave it.
The US Star system is run by Forbes Travel Guide (formerly Mobil Travel Guide). In Australia it’s run by The Australian Auto Club, in the UK it’s the Automobile Association and in most of Europe its The European Hotel stars Union.
But in Portugal the system is run by the Private Non-Profit organisation Portuguese Hoteliers Association (AHP).
Tings Lisbon needs services to get stars. But...
Tings Lisbon only has only one star. But We have garden, river view, one of the best breakfasts in town and the best viewpoint next door.
Without AHP’s star NO hotel. The number of stars you get depends on how many services and facilities you can tag on AHP’s lists.
In principle there is nothing wrong with that, if it wasn’t because many of the services either belong to the past, are irrelevant or both. Based on our vast experience as world travelers we knew exactly what to offer our kind of travelers. Bidet in the bathroom, TV, laundry service, cable telephone etc. were not among them.
Our focus on charm and ambiances combined with the most important conveniences from the Five stars hotels we’ve stayed in during our business travels plus a few services we have enjoyed ourselves on the smaller places that have inspired us – didn’t count at all.
Neither did our small guest kitchen where traveling food lovers can cook light meals from the local shops around the corner. Or our special made 100% cotton bed linen AND down duvet. Or our home-made bread etc. None of these – to us – valuable services and facilities had a positive impact on our Stars.
But all of that turned out to be completely irrelevant.
Tings Lisbon has more than two floors and according to AFP’s rules hotels with more than 2 floors, MUST have an elevator to get more than one star!
So that’s why Tings Lisbon only has one star.
And we love our star!
Thomas & Annette
