Hotels are commercial places to stay, with as many different amenities as standard. Hotels are given one to five stars. The stars are awarded – (and this is the basic of properly categorising a place) – for certain acceptable standards.

• One star is for excellency of food.
• Two stars are for an extraordinary wine cellar, in addition to the excellent food.
• Three stars add the feature “house with a view”.
• Four stars are awarded, if there is a leisure centre connected to the hotel.
• Five stars are for overall excellency and luxury rooms.

Sometimes it appears that a hotel should only be a three star hotel, as it has, for example, no leisure centre. In some cases there is the possibility to be awarded a star for a hotel even without a leisure centre, if the place otherwise reflects a four star standard.

The rates for hotel rooms are not bound to the category the hotel is in, but for to what it actually offers. So the rates can go from €5 for a two star hotel somewhere in the pampa of South America to thousands of euros per night, in somewhere like Dubai.

This is the category The Ferndale Guest House & Restaurant is in. In this category the accommodation usually reflect the restaurants standard, if the restaurant is high class the rooms are as well. It comes in one package.

Those premises are normally not categorised, unless there is Michelin stars given to it. The Michelin star is a private award, given to reflect extraordinary culinary food. The maximum stars a restaurant can get is three. But of course there are plenty of restaurants in Ireland, which serve delicious food without having any Michelin star.

Prices for Rooms in this category can vary between €35 and €200 per night, depending on the quality of the place.

A guest house is basically a small hotel or a hotel with limited services in catering. Guest houses do not need a bar or a fully licensed premises and normally needs to have six or more bedrooms to be in accordance with Bord Failte regulations.

Rating

Guest Houses have ratings from one to four stars, depending on the comfort and services they provide. One star means standard simple accommodation. Bathrooms can sometimes be on the floor, or a certain amount of rooms would be non en-suite. The more stars a guest house has, the more comfortable the rooms are. A four star guest house usually has the standard of a four star hotel, but the surroundings would be much more intimate.

Guest houses do not have all the amenities of a hotel and do not need to have a restaurant or bar. The rates for guesthouses vary between €35 and €100 and are up to €200 per night for outstanding places.

Here is a little guide to help you answer these questions:

Bed and Breakfast

Bed and Breakfasts are first and foremost private family houses which offer a room/rooms in their home. They are normally comfortable places for a reasonable price. At the moment you pay around €35 per night per person sharing. Breakfast is normally a more or less full Irish with individual specialities.

Most of the B&Bs now offer en-suite bedrooms, but you might find shared bathrooms in older houses. The original idea is that you are, for a short time, a guest of the family and welcomed into their private space. Families are allowed to open their house as a B&B without any licensing.

As B&Bs in Ireland have no rating, you will have to decide for yourself if you like it or not.

Bord Failte, the Irish Tourist Board has introduced some standards for B&Bs, which take the approved B&B away from the original concept, where you are guest of the family. Approved B&Bs are often run as proper (summer time) businesses, in which you will have your own breakfast room, your own lounge and so on. Usually Approved B&Bs are slightly more expensive, as getting the approval costs quite an amount of money per year, not mentioning the fire, safety and building regulations they have to comply with.