World's first ever 9 star hotel!

Now that got your attention did it not?

Sorry to disappoint you but this post is not really about a nine star hotel, but please keep on reading as there is no 7 star hotel either (well...not yet at least) as the star rating system of most countries that I know of does not exceed the star rating of five stars.

 This is a post about how media are manipulating our perceptions of truth and how we seem to be accepting at face value anything we read. I am using an example of a hotel and audiences specializing in hospitality management to illustrate my point.

The example of Burj Al Arab will never seize to amaze me.  I use this trick question every time I start a hospitality related class "What is the star rating of the Burj Al Arab"

I ask this question to identify two things
a) The hospitality related, knowledge of my students
b) The strength of their critical thinking and research.

When the audience tells me Burj what? then I know I have my work cut out for me, but what really never stops amusing me is when the audience knows the hotel and are absolutely certain the hotel has a 7 star rating.

At one point about 5 years ago I started keeping tabs of hospitality students, hospitality managers and tourism & hospitality lecturers that I asked the question.  Here are the results (convenience sample) :

Hospitality students n=156 
Answers:
7 star = 108
don't know/not sure = 35
5 star = 13
In my mixed sample of undergraduate and postgraduate students about 69% of students studying hospitality believe the Burj Al Arab is a 7 star.  One was adamant it is so because she even wrote an essay about it at one module that got her a 71% mark! She was so immersed in this truth she would refuse to believe it was not so even after all the evidence were produced.

Hotel & Restaurant Managers n=47
Answers:
7 star = 29
 don't know/don't care  = 0
5 star = 18
 The sample here is mainly hotel managers at junior and middle management posts with at least 1 year of management experience in the industry. Still  surprisingly 62% believe the hotel is a 7 star.

Tourism and Hospitality Lecturers n=11
Answers

7 star = 6
don't know/don't care  = 0
5 star = 5
 A much smaller sample but even here a 55% of specialists believe the Burj Al Arab to be a 7 star hotel.

Let me get this clear, I do not argue that the Burj Al Arab does not deserve to be considered over and above 5 stars in terms of quality. I am also sure that the Burj Al Arab may one day really get 7 stars once their country rating system is changed to accommodate this change.

The 7star saga in hospitality does not stop there. LinkedIn has a group named as 7th Star Hoteliers and there is a 7star Hospitality Group based in Spain.  I suspect the marketing attraction of a 7star anything is too strong to ignore but still when does a marketing gimmick  ends and where does manipulation begin?

What I do find it difficult to understand is why we allow our selves to be so easily manipulated even when the subject in question is something that we are trying to become specialists in. There are many other examples of how the public perception is manipulated but I think for our industry the 7star case is probably one of the strongest.

 If it is easy to change or manipulate the perceptions of specialists in their own area of expertise, imagine how easy it is to manipulate perceptions of the public.  Now that the power of the media is partially at least at the hands of the public, research skills and critical/analytical thinking should be skills that every hospitality manager is equipped with.  Do not wait to challenge what is served as common knowledge because tomorrow the common knowledge may be that your hotel or restaurant is crap...