“The big surprise is caused by a simple fact”, Johannes K. Svoboda, GM of DELTA CHECK, explained, “it has been the very first time that star-rated hotels could be counted at all, completely and on a global level.”

He noted that it took three decades of research and development to collect all the hotel data needed to successfully realise the count. In total the data of 2.3 million hotels had to be recorded and processed within “GARD”, the “Global Accommodation Reference Database”, before the counting could be started.

On this background it is no longer a surprise that no any count of star-rated hotels has been available ever. Even worse – numbers had to be guessed, an inadequate situation for one of world’s biggest industries.

DELTA CHECK’s hotel database puts an end to guessing. Instead it delivers countable facts.

“GARD” today is the trusted reference for global hotel data: Universities like Cambridge and Cornell use it as a reliable basis for their scientific studies, while OTAs like “Booking.com” and hotel suppliers like “Customer Alliance” benefit from it by speeding up their growth.

Distribution over Continents

Half of all 386,144 star-rated hotels are located in Europe, followed by Asia (21%) and America (19%) on ranks two and three. Africa, Australia & Oceania, the Middle East and the Caribbean together sum up to 10% of all star-rated hotels.

Distribution over Rating

The segmentation of star-rated hotels has a strong symmetrical structure. The biggest segment (midmarket, 3 Stars) already represents 45% of the overall market. Particularly striking is the strong growth of the 5-star luxury segment, counting nearly 20,000 hotels worldwide. The three 7-star hotels are not shown in the chart.