Dublin's five-star hotels fail to impress critic

Dublin's five-star hotels cannot compete with top international hotels because they lack "real star quality", the founder of hotel review magazine Nota Bene has said.

Hotels in the capital have been poorly thought-out and suffer from pervasive cooking smells and "awful, jarring piped-in music", Anthony Lassman said.

Mr Lassman, who publishes the Nota Bene anonymous review of international hotels, restaurants and nightlife, was speaking at the Fáilte Ireland national tourism conference in Dublin yesterday.

"There is nothing fundamentally wrong with several of the hotels in Dublin, but they should be competing with hotels in the major cities around the world and nothing I have seen really stand out as having real star quality," he said

Two hotels had some five- star elements; the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge had excellent service and the original part of the Merrion Hotel had very fine Georgian architecture and a good manager, Mr Lassman said.

"These hotels do a lot of things well but they're not up there with the 90 per cent of achievers internationally. Star ratings can be very misleading, I don't see any reason why the Four Seasons and the Merrion couldn't become worthy of five stars, but at the moment they're just the best of what's available."

Dublin no longer had the excuse that it was too poor to have international-class hotels as there was a "huge surplus of money" and some "very wealthy people" in the city, he said.

"Surely there must be a place for hotels to match the quality of those in Paris, New York and Tokyo . . ."

Fáilte Ireland chief executive Shaun Quinn said the margins in the tourism industry were been "squeezed" more every year.

"The figures for 2006 are probably going to show record numbers of tourists, but revenue is not keeping pace with the growth in tourist numbers." Hotels needed to improve their service to visitors and try to offer a "more compelling product," he said.

"It's important to make efficiencies, to look at your costs and see if there is something that maybe isn't adding any value for the customer."