Mobil Travel Guide, FG Destinations Partner on Caribbean Ratings

A number of Caribbean hotels may soon be part of a region-wide hotel rating system thanks to a partnership between Mobil Travel Guide and the Texas-based FreemanGroup, a hospitality and tourism service evaluation and improvement firm.

The partnership, which is part of FreemanGroup´s new FG Destinations´ launch –an initiative headed by Kedrick Malone, former director of tourism for the British Virgin Islands- marks Mobil Travel Guide´s plans to go worldwide with its Star rating system.

Mobil Travel Guide (MTG), which has rated hotels, restaurants and spas in the U.S. and Canada since 1958 by using teams of anonymous inspectors to evaluate properties using a star-rating system based on 750 criteria, will use the same rigorous standards for its Caribbean hotel reviews, according to MTG.

The Caribbean reviews will be evaluated by MTG´s field inspectors and undercover service evaluators, just as they do now for about 9,000 hotels and restaurants and 300 spas in the U.S. and Canada.

MTG inspectors will visit a property for three days during the inspections. Their visits will not be announced beforehand nor will the inspectors reveal their true identities while at the properties, according to Shane O´Flaherty, vice president of quality assurance for Mobil Travel Guide.

Properties in Aruba and the British Virgin Islands already have signed on to participate in the inspection and rating program.