How professional rankings work

TRUE 5 STARS publishes two related rankings: the best-rated hotels by professionals, and the best-rated hotel brands derived from those hotel scores.

Both are based on independent professional assessments and industry lists—not on user ratings from online travel agencies or review platforms.

The rules below are applied consistently to every hotel in the curated collection that meets the entry requirements.

Each hotel is evaluated using up to three sources, when they apply to that property:

Forbes Travel Guide star rating (Four-Star or Five-Star).

MICHELIN Keys (One, Two or Three Keys, 2026 edition).

Inclusion on The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026 list.

These distinctions appear on the hotel’s TRUE 5 STARS profile when they apply. If a source does not apply to a hotel, it is left out of the calculation rather than counted as a low score.

Each available source is converted to a score on a 0–100 scale:

Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star: 95 points. Four-Star: 85 points.

MICHELIN Keys: Three Keys 95; Two Keys 85; One Key 75.

The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026 (list inclusion): 90 points.

When a hotel has more than one applicable source, its professional score is the average of those point values.

Only hotels that are part of the live TRUE 5 STARS collection and open to guests are considered. Properties listed as future openings are not ranked.

A hotel must have at least two of the three professional sources above to receive a score and a place in the hotel ranking.

Scores are ranked from highest to lowest. The number shown is rounded to two decimal places; ordering uses the full calculated value.

If two hotels have the same calculated score, the higher rank goes to the hotel with more MICHELIN stars in on-property restaurants (as shown on the profile).

If that is still tied, hotels are ordered alphabetically by name.

A brand’s score is the average professional score of its qualifying hotels in the TRUE 5 STARS collection.

A brand is listed only if at least five of its hotels qualify for the hotel ranking.

Each qualifying hotel contributes equally. The count shown in the brand table is the number of hotels used in that average.

If two brands share the same score, the brand with more qualifying hotels ranks higher; if still tied, brands are ordered alphabetically by name.

Rankings are calculated automatically from the professional information held for each hotel. TRUE 5 STARS does not manually change individual scores or positions to favour particular hotels or brands.

Forbes Travel Guide, MICHELIN, The World’s 50 Best Hotels and their names and marks belong to their respective owners. Their use in this methodology does not imply that those organisations endorse or partner with TRUE 5 STARS.

Last updated October 2026.