Just wondering if there are any hotels out there, not with the AA hotel scheme, who have managed to get the hotel restaurant assessed for Rossettes and if so how is it done. The AA profess that it is not necessary to be in the hotel scheme to get a restaurant assessed.
The AA do not like listing a hotel restaurant that is not in their hotel scheme and will endeavour to try and sign the hotel up to the grading assesment or even insisit they use one of their consultancy visits to asses if they would make the grade.
The restaurant guide is basically made up of establishments tested by their inspectorate but they do try to not list a hotel restaurant that is not part of their hotel scheme as this is lost revenue for them. They obviously do list restaurants but try to upsell their entries by having photos included etc at an extra cost.
I personally feel they should really keep the two seperate as I think there are too many "hotel restaurants" listed and perhaps if the guide was sponsored by an external commercial company that then meant the AA did not rely on the payments receieved from the hotel companies to asses the restaurants it would be less biased.
Just my humble opinion
Peter, I totally agree.
There's a lot of excellent food out there that might not make the free AA Restaurant Guide because properitors don't want to pay to be in the AA Hotel Guide for a range of reasons. Feedback from industry contacts suggest the theory that Hotel subs pay for the inspector to get into location, thus saving the guide money, so that content for two guides can be created at minimal cost, rather than one guide at significant cost. There might be a few exceptions at the higher level because the absence of some high profile establishments might diminish a guides broader appeal. This raises the potential question of whether the Hotel Guide is populated by establishments soley interested in Rosettes, in which case the Restaurant Guide might not be as free and based on merit as people might think. Equally, if the Restaurant Guide was based on not having to pay to be in the Hotel Guide, what would be the implications for the Hotel Guide? Do they both survive because they lean on each other? If there wasn't a Hotel Guide with associated revenues, then there might not be a team of inspectors to resource the Restaurant Guide. The lines appear blurred.
Any guide that selects and rates establishments on a commercial model might be in danger of loosing credability.
I think your idea of impartiality is very worthy. If you remove the cost implications and work soley on merit, and increase the frequency of inspections, this I beleive is what the public and industry expect.