Israel may abolish the “star” system for grading hotels in order to encourage competition and discourage excessive prices, Tourism Minister Gideon Patt told a meeting of the Israel Hoteliers Association last week.
The star system is used all over the world to classify hotels according to objective standards of quality.
The difference between one and five stars is reflected in the price differential, which is supervised and enforced by the ministry.
Patt admitted his ministry’s standards are somewhat more lenient to the hotelier than in other countries.
But the system itself discourages fair competition and keeps prices artificially high, the tourism minister said, at a time when Israel’s hotels need all the business they can get.
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