Key:stars

The verifiability of this key is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

The stars=* tag is used to describe the classification of a hotel, restaurant, etc.

To comply with the verifiability requirement, only stars that are awarded by recognised tourism boards, based on objective criteria, or based on association memberships, should be mapped. That excludes values from rating platforms that collect subjective opinions.

However, when there is more than one association or board which is awarding stars, this may not be objective. Some sources of "star" ratings may be copyrighted and cannot be added to the OpenStreetMap database due to incompatible licensing.

Hotels

There is no worldwide standard on the classification of hotels. The European Hotelstars Union has defined criteria which are used in several Central European countries. Other countries have their own standards (defined e.g. by the government or by a hotel association), but most of these standards use a range of 1 to 5 stars. Some hotels around the world claim to have 6 or even 7 stars.

European Hotelstars Union levels:

☆	Tourist
☆S	Superior Tourist
☆☆	Standard
☆☆S	Superior Standard
☆☆☆	Comfort
☆☆☆S	Superior Comfort
☆☆☆☆	First Class
☆☆☆☆S	Superior First Class
☆☆☆☆☆	Luxury
☆☆☆☆☆S	Superior Luxury

Examples for this tag:

stars=1

stars=5S

stars=6

stars=4.5

Note: using numbers for full stars, point numbers for half stars and adding an S for Superior is a de-facto standard in OpenStreetMap. There is a MapRoulette challenge that tries to enforce the de-facto standard. However, there has not been a discussion yet on how to tag the intermediate levels (e.g. "☆☆☆☆☆ Superior", "☆☆☆ Plus").

See also

• Proposed features/Awards and ratings for a generic approach to tag specific systems and be explicitly about which system is used.

Restaurants

The Michelin Guide is a restaurant guide that is available for several regions around the world. Very good restaurants receive 1 to 3 Michelin stars. These restaurants can be tagged with the stars=* tag. Please use the most current edition of the Michelin Guide as a reference. Please don't tag restaurants with stars=0, as this value is implied.

Note: This feature was never voted upon and the system has a big problem: it is reserving a generic key for a specific brand. There is a better way to tag this: the key award:<system>=*. See here for more info: Proposed features/Awards and ratings.

Camp sites

For camp sites there is 5 star classification scheme which is used in France and should be used in the following modified version, if there is no national reference [1](de). If there is a country specific scheme, you should use this scheme.

☆	lowest level, least comfort
☆☆	needs amenity rooms for common activities and a reception
☆☆☆	reception must speak at least three languages including the native language; reception must be open 24/7; playground, internet access and shopping facilities needed
☆☆☆☆	nearby grocery store, bars and restaurants needed; reception must speak English; maximum number of pitches per hectare must be below 80
☆☆☆☆☆	reception must speak four languages including the native language; must have things like swimming pools, heated bathrooms and heated showers

Other classifications

There are other classifications that do not use star symbols, such as the diamond rating published by the AAA. All kind of award systems and ratings can be mapped by using this proposal: Proposed_features/Awards_and_ratings.

United States

As discussed. The US has no standard hotel/restaurant rating system, as such, all star ratings in the US are a form of advertising. So the use of the stars tag in the US is discouraged.

Rendering

Currently, neither Mapnik nor Osmarender display stars in any way. Renderers could display small yellow stars behind the hotel or restaurant name at high zoom levels. OSM Query renders stars as black Unicode stars under the hotel name.