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It’s never really that wise to put a lot of faith in the star ratings assigned to a hotel anywhere in the world. Whether a hotel is right for you or not all depends on what you need - and sometimes a hotel might have a higher rating (and then usually a higher price) than the one next door just because it has a particular machine in its gym or ice machines in the halls, both of which you might not need.

But the case in China is even more extreme, because until last year hotels could retain their star rating permanently, without having to be re-evaluated. That spells danger, right? And a perfect case in point is the Shenzhen Grand View Hotel in Guangdong Province, which was a five-star hotel in name for a long time but really lacking the quality you’d expect.

It turns out that the Shenzhen Grand View Hotel had a whole heap of problems, not least of which was the fact that the general manager ran away with large sum of the hotel’s money, never to be seen again.

The China National Tourism Administration recently stripped its five-star rating, although the remaining hotel staff have vowed to bring the Shenzhen Grand View Hotel back up to five-star standard as quickly as possible. Other hotels continue to be evaluated, but the changes in ratings might not make it into guidebooks or advertising that fast, so be aware that the stars might be a bit meaningless.