I’m not quite sure when hotels decided they could go “one louder” but it seems that if a hotel is not six stars at the moment it’s not worth staying at. Saying that, apparently there are now seven star hotels too, including the Morgan Plaza currently being built in Beijing, the sky is the limit!

This is all very well but six and seven stars are apparently self-given and are a marketing ploy to hype the hotel, the highest official rating is still 5-star..

So, anyway, I’m currently on Jeju island, staying at one of these so-called six star hotels, I was interested to find out what you get that’s so much better than 5 stars? Well, not a lot basically…

Let’s have a look at some photos:

My room, pretty big and well designed but with some annoying features, the plug sockets in the desk are rather deep and through  a narrow slot, it was impossible to plug in my laptop or blackberry with their UK plugs and adapters. I ended up having to unplug the corner lamps which meant that I couldn’t charge anything overnight (don’t seem to be able to selectively leave these switched on without the ceiling lights being on). Also the electronic safe is very snazzy but unfathomable, I followed the instructions to the letter about 5 times but still haven’t managed to get the door open.

The bathroom – very nicely laid out and has one of those toilets with an integral drinks dispenser which I’ve blogged about before. Unfortunately the shaving mirror was useless, there’s no way to tilt the mirror and it hangs down slightly, the only way to see my face in it was to stoop down close to the the counter… NUL POINT!! oh, one bonus point for being able to see the tv from the toilet.. Oh yeah, they have a bath (a very welcome addition) but no bath foam or salts, bah humbug!!!

The view, probably one of the best I’ve seen, the hotel is right on the sea front and my room gets the morning sun! No complaints here.

We’ve been having meetings downstairs in their conference suite, it was ok but didn’t blow me away. The projector was poor and the room only had one lighting option, extremely bright or completely switched off. I had to keep running backwards and forwards to switch the lights off so that we could see images on the presentations and then turning them on again when we had discussions. We’re moving to another room today, let’s hope that’s better!

The thing that has annoyed me the most though (forgetting about the ridiculously overpriced food and beer (10 USD for a beer, that’s what you expect in these places)) is that my room has a DVD player but had no remote control. When I called reception last night to ask where the remote control was they replied:

“yes, we have them downstairs, can you come down to reception and we’ll give you one.” What?? this is supposed to be a six star hotel, when I stay at a 3 or 4 star hotel in China they’ll send someone running up to your room no matter what you ask! Mind you, I didn’t actually say any of this because I’m British, I just changed out of my superman pyjamas back into my business stuff, trooped down to reception, picked up the remote controller and thanked them profusely..

“Six stars”?? I don’t think so.. (but don’t tell them I said that ok, if they ask I was extremely happy with my stay)