ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512030027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
Hotel Roanoke lived up to its billing Friday as the city's grand old inn, earning a four-diamond rating from the American Automobile Association.
The renovated hotel and conference center was judged excellent, though not renowned, by an auto club inspector who registered under a false name for a short stay soon after the hotel reopened in April.
The motor club waited half a year after the inspector's unannounced visit before revealing the results at a reception Friday.
The hotel had a three-diamond rating when it closed in 1989 for $42 million worth of repairs and addition of a city-owned conference center. Its new ranking matches that of The Homestead resort in Hot Springs and beats the current rating of any other hotel in the Roanoke Valley.
Ratings will appear in the 1996 edition of AAA's Mid-Atlantic TourBook, a travel guide available to the club's 37 million members worldwide. The edition is due out in February.
Hotel officials predicted the new rating will draw business, especially from leisure travelers.
"We're very thrilled with the award and especially proud of our employees," said Gary Walton, general manager.
Walton also gave credit to the people behind the entities that own the hotel - Virginia Tech Real Estate Foundation and Renew Roanoke - and to the city of Roanoke, owner of the adjoining conference center.
The 333-room landmark hotel, where room rates run from $79 to $149 a night, scored a notch below the club's top rating of five diamonds. Only two hotels in Virginia were judged perfect for 1996: the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond and The Inn at Little Washington in Rappahannock County.
But Hotel Roanoke is among only 825 hotels nationally and 18 in Virginia to earn four diamonds in the latest ratings, which looked at more than than 20,000 hotels in North America. The motor club rates hotels annually.
Although Hotel Roanoke will strive for a five-diamond rating, the improvements needed to achieve that distinction could force room rates higher than what the hotel believes it can charge at this time, Walton said.
An AAA inspection can be a "horrifying" time for a hotel general manager, an AAA source said. Walton didn't have such a hard time, though. He recalled the inspector dropping by his office in May to reveal that she had been checking the hotel from top to bottom during the previous 36 hours. "You take a deep breath and come up and meet with them," Walton said.
Walton said he then had to "grab keys" of vacant rooms randomly from behind the front desk and open them for the inspector. "You can't prepare ahead of time," Walton said.
The inspector complained only of not being told maids were available to turn down her bed if she asked - a prerequisite of 4-diamond hotels - "and little things like that," Walton said. "Everything was really very positive."
Walton said the newness of the hotel led him to decline to have a separate rating written up for the main dining room, the Regency Room. The quality of the dining room was factored into the overall rating, however.
Hotel industry officials had praise for the Hotel Roanoke's achievement. "Any time you can get an outside source to say, 'This hotel is great,' it's a great plug for the hotel," said Kathryn Cochran of the American Hotel and Motel Association in Washington, D.C.
Hotel Roanoke employees demonstrated the importance of Friday's announcement by fussing over the room for the ceremony with dusting cloths and brooms even as television cameras were put in place. A silver tray was set out with almond-paste confections from the hotel kitchen, bourbon balls and an urn of warm, sweet punch.
A hotel's diamond rating turns on such details - and travelers rely on the AAA travel guide to note which ones are present. Although at least 10 guides rate hotels, the greatest number of travelers consult those published by AAA and Mobil Oil, Cochran said. Mobil officials have not announced a rating for Hotel Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Elegant rooms such as the lobby ofby CNBHotel Roanoke helped the
renovated landmark earn four diamonds from the American Automobile
Association. color. Graphic: Chart by staff: What the reatings mean.
color.