I have sent the following comment to AAA and wonder if other AAA members have similar views.

I'm a longtime user of your maps and TourBooks and for the most part have greatly appreciated them. But I have come to find the ratings, especially for restaurants, increasingly curious, inconsistent and unreliable. The reviewers' subjectivity invoved in the various comments is understandable, but the choices of restaurants to include are often very strange. To cite just one current example: the list for Panama City, FL, omits several top restaurants (e.g. Boathouse and Captain Anderson's) but does include the fast-food chain Moe's. Similarly, many other city listings include chain sub-sandwich shops and the like while leaving out restaurants in all price ranges that are clearly superior and popular. ... Probably this comment is too general to be of help, but I offer it for your consideration. Perhaps some more consistent, more rigid guidelines for your reviewers would be in order.

Speaking of Panama City restaurants, I advise anyone going there to avoid Scampy's (near St. Andrew's State Park) .... The food was all right but the place is too small, too crowded, too loud -- and the service atrocious. On a recent Monday evening, my party of two was rushed mercilessly: We had barely started eating when the server came to ask if we were ready for the check. I thought it was a joke or perhaps she got the tables mixed up. But it was no joke. She came by a couple minutes later to leave the check anyway, without asking if we wanted more wine, a dessert, or anything else. In several decades of dining out, we've never before seen anything quite so rude and bizarre. (And the manager kept circling the room looking for tables to empty; how disgusting!)

Churn and burn. Woo then shoo.
New people = more profit.
Regulars? Not in a tourist place.
Welcome to the numbers game.
The more you drink the longer you stay because the profit is in the booze.

We have found AAA TourBook restaurant ratings to be extremely helpful in towns for which restaurants aren't listed in other guidebooks.

TourBooks have often steered us to popular local places that we would never have found on our own.

One excetion out of many: A very nasty in Blythe, CA. We should have gone to Sizzler--also listed.

Hi Hop along,

I think what you are finding is the result of places not being AAA members. Only those that pay AAA dues are listed/reviewed in the books. Same is true of accommodation--no pay, no say in the books.

I agree with GJLinda. In addition, I discovered that though the 'stars' are awarded by AAA, the description of the restaurant (and hotel) is provided by management of the specific facility.

pollyvw--I don't know about restaurants, but AAA gives hotels their DIAMOND ratings, not vice versa. Same with Mobil stars.

Hotels DO give their ratings to Priceline for certain--not certain how the others (Hotwire, Expedia etc) arrive at theirs.

LOL...and they take them (diamonds/stars) away, as the case may be!!

LJLinda: Thanks for your comment but I believe you're very much mistaken about the AAA policies. Their TourBooks don't even have restaurant advertising, and the motel/hotel ads clearly have no bearing on the ratings. (Some of the most prolific advertisers routinely get no better than the 1-diamond rank, and the no-influence policy is plainly stated at the front of the book.)

I've stayed at a 1 star AAA motel in Niagara Falls Canada. 1 star means clean and sufficient to stay in and that is about it but I stay at places for the purpose of the basics and a place to sleep.

I'm just now seeing GJLinda's comments regarding paying to be listed.

We had a long drawn out discussion about this a month or so ago which you can probably find by entering "AAA" in the search box. hop_along is correct. Hotels and restaurants do not pay to be listed. Everyone who wants to be listed is. Some opt out because they don't like/agree with their ratings. They DO pay to use the AAA logo, but that's it.

Malesherbes, re-read my post. We are saying the same thing. I only added that the 'description' is usually provided by the facility. AAA provides the 'rating' be it stars or diamonds...whichever.

I'm sorry pollyvw...you are absolutely right, I mis-read you!

I have no idea about the descriptions, where they come from, and my "source" is currently out on the golf course. I'm curious too though, so will see what he knows when he gets back.

Malesherbes, seriously, no apologies necessaries. And my source was the proprietor of a AAA listed motel where we stayed once. We had a heck of a time finding it after we had made the reservation way in advance. Upon checking in, I said to the owner/proprietor, "The directions in the AAA book are not very clear. They need to hire a new writer." "Well," he said to me, "They only give us so much space to write all that information." Looking back, I guess we both had egg on our faces.