Mary Ellen said:The criteria are also modified from time to time. A number of years ago a VERY nice resort in my home state asked to be dropped from the ratings. AAA added a requirement that all 5 diamond properties (which they had been for many, many years) have a deadbolt on the door of each room. This resort is only accessible by train or helicopter and saw no reason to put deadbolts on the cabin doors. They felt it would undermine the remote, get away from it all, feel they had.
BTW, to AAA they are diamonds NOT stars. That is a different company.
Several years ago AAA actually required not just deadbolts, but a certain length of deadbolt as a requirement for hotels to be rated. This caused a flurry of activity as a great number of hotels had originally been built with shorter deadbolts.
The length of the deadbolt is one item considered, and is required for a property to be rated, as in your example.
(And yes, thanks for pointing out about the diamonds! Mobile uses stars, and has different criteria, so a property can be 3 diamonds and 4 stars)