HSU-President Jens Zimmer Christensen: A future-oriented hotel classification is a cornerstone for an internationally competitive European tourism destination

Delegates of the 17 member countries of the Hotelstars Union (HSU) met in Vienna to discuss the future challenges to ensure the successful continuation of the strategic partnership. The Managing Board particularly welcomed Georgia, France and Poland as potential new partners in the stars family. Each country confirmed its concrete interest in HSU membership, as the harmonised criteria are the future for a prosperous hotel industry.

In his introduction Jens Zimmer Christensen, the current President of the Hotelstars Union (HSU), emphasised the importance of working together for a common hotel classification in order to ensure the high quality star promise to the 180 million potential hotel guests and the 50.000 classified hotels a like. “It is the upcoming revision process of our criteria catalogue, which will be one of our major challenges in the near future”, said HSU President and identified the modernization of the criteria, an increased transparency and a more flexible system as the most important objectives.

Besides the upcoming revision process, the strengthening of the profile of HSU was the second main topic of the meeting. Especially in direction to the online travel agents (OTA’s) the HSU committed itself to increase its visibility as a strong brand. “In times of online reviews, it is even more important to extend this reliable and objective star rating throughout Europe – especially with the big platforms such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor with which we are in discussion regarding the display of star ratings on their platforms”, reported Jens Zimmer Christensen.

“The official star rating must provide valuable information for the customers alongside and within the many rating platforms. That is why we need a future-oriented hotel classification as a cornerstone for a quality standard system of the European tourism destination in international competition”, the HSU President concluded.

Hotelstars Union

Under the patronage of HOTREC – Hospitality Europe - the hotels associations of Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland have created the Hotelstars Union. In the meantime, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia joined the star family. Their product is a harmonised criteria catalogue for hotel classification, to provide the guests and hoteliers with transparency and security. For detailed information please visit www.hotelstars.eu.