The organisation in charge of tourist accommodation classification in France is Atout France. They have a rigorous classification system which complies with international standards for different types of accommodation: hotels, campsites, self catering accommodation etc.
It is the responsibility of the accommodation owners to apply for a star rating which means that many accommodations are 'unrated'.
There are also some other organisations in France who have their own accommodation ratings such as the Gites de France. They use 'ears of corn' to classify their accommodation and have devised their own criteria for accommodation to comply to for each number of ears of corn. If an accommodation wants to be on the register of Gites de France, they are inspected and given an 'ear of corn' rating according to this criteria.
At Undiscovered Mountains in the Southern French Alps, we use a lot of different accommodation types, some of which have applied for an official star rating, some of which remain 'unrated' and some which are also on the Gites de France register so have an 'ear of corn' rating.
To simplify this, we have used stars for all accommodations that are rated with the name of the organisation responsible for that rating written underneath. For example, for Gites de France rated accommodation, we have used 3 stars for 3 ears of corn. In general, we use the Gites de France Rating for most of our self catering and bed and breakfast accommodation and Atout France for hotels and campsites where they have applied for a rating.
For detailed information about the different criterias demanded by these classification systems, please read the following explanations, pdfs and follow the links where appropriate.
If you would like to look at the criteria for hoteliers to get their stars have a look at the hotel classification grid. It is quite complicated and aimed at hoteliers rather than tourists. A simplified grid of what to expect is written below.
On the grid there is a list of elements that describes types of services, equipment and hotel qualities. Next to these are the different star ratings possible for a hotel, a point score and whether it is a compulsory element (marked with a red X) or non-compulsory element (marked with a blue O) for that rating.
To obtain it's star rating a hotel must obtain the 95% of the number of points allocated to that star level for the compulsory elements and acquire a certain number of points from the non-compulsory elements. If they are lacking a certain number of compulsory points for a specific rating they can make up the defecit with three times the number of non-compulsory points.
Amount of points required:
| Star Rating | Compulsory Points | Non Compulsory Points |
| 1 | 141 | 24 |
| 2 | 161 | 45 |
| 3 | 177 | 83 |
| 4 | 226 | 112 |
| 5 | 298 | 118 |
To simplify this:
| Star Rating | What to expect |
| 1* |
Budget Hotel
|
| 2* and 3* |
Mid Standard Hotel
|
| 4* and 5* |
High Quality Hotels
|
Campsites have a similar grid to work to with points and here is the simplified version of what to expect.
| Star Rating | What to expect |
| 1* |
Budget Campsite:
|
| 2* and 3* |
Mid Standard Campsite:
|
| 4* and 5* |
Quality Campsite:
|
Please have a look at the Gites de France website for a details of their classifications for the different ears of corn.
For information, the word Gite is the term used for self catering apartments and properties.
