Tourists 'misled' by star ratings

By Jane Harvey BBC Wales Week In Week Out presenter

At times the service was as unwelcome as the bathrooms

The holiday industry brings £3bn into the Welsh economy every year.

It's a growing industry and one that we should be very excited about.

The Wales Tourist Board was scrapped in April 2006 and tourism is now the direct responsibility of the Welsh Assembly Government under the auspices of Visit Wales.

Anyone who's seen the Visit Wales adverts on the TV, showing our spectacular countryside and wonderful beaches, can't fail to feel a flicker of pride.

There are many people in the Welsh tourism industry making us proud too. They're working hard to provide fantastic accommodation, service and food.

But Visit Wales can put as many fancy ads on TV as it likes - if the reality of holidaying here is unclean hotel rooms and unhelpful staff, no amount of gloss will keep people coming back.

The Week In Week Out team spent several weeks undercover as holidaymakers, armed with secret cameras and staying in random hotels across Wales.

As well as booking into accommodation, we also turned up unannounced and asked to have a look at a couple of rooms.

There are great places to stay in Wales - clean, stylish and friendly hotels run by efficient and caring staff - but we also found far too many hotels that were simply awful.

Dirty carpets, unpleasant odours, damp bathrooms, broken furniture, tatty furnishings, stained bedcovers. Many of the rooms were so dire that if I'd turned up for a weekend with my family we'd have turned round and gone home.

'Dirty, damp and smelly'

According to the assembly government and Visit Wales, the best way to find what you're looking for is to use their rating system.

Accommodation is rated from one to five stars. Five is luxurious, one is more basic but all should be clean and hospitable.

If holiday accommodation has a star rating, you can rest assured it's been given the once over by one of the 14 inspectors working for Visit Wales.

But our investigation found there was a huge variation in the quality of hotels out there - but the star system doesn't seem to reflect it.

We found poor three-star hotels and great two-star ones. In one town we inspected three star hotels just streets apart. The more expensive, at £90 per room, was dirty, damp and smelly.

Wallpaper was found peeling off walls in some hotels

The maid told us the owner wasn't bothered because the place was being turned into flats at the end of the season.

A short walk from there to the seafront, we found another three star hotel where the owner bent over backwards to show us a refurbished room that was spotless - with a sea view and all for £20 less!

But perhaps the variation in standards amongst the star ratings is understandable when you realise that Visit Wales inspections are announced to the hotels beforehand.

Perhaps the most worrying part of our findings however, relates to a number of hotels that are actively misleading the public about their star ratings.

I interviewed one man from Hull, Simeon Tulip, who told me he was led into believing the north Wales hotel he'd booked for a weekend had two stars.

He found the information on the website. When he arrived after a long journey, he thought the accommodation was so bad he left five minutes after checking in, losing the £68 he paid.

Mr Tulip was so appalled that the hotel got away with misleading people about its star rating he says he won't trust the Welsh star system again and he's been put off visiting the area.

He feels the Visit Wales adverts are great and he loves coming to the country to mountain bike and walk but he told me that unless he can be assured the accommodation is of a good standard, he'd rather go elsewhere.

Week In Week Out is on BBC One Wales on Tuesday 13 June at 2245 BST.