Why a three-star stay hits the sweet spot

Forget the bells and whistles of Europe’s ‘luxury’ hotels and you will find cool character, a warm welcome and delicious breakfasts, says Laura Fowler. Here’s the lowdown on some of the best

Alife in the fast lane is not for everyone. While high flyers are busy striving for the very top, others are perfectly happy bumbling along, just doing their own thing.

We hear a lot about the high-flyers of the hotel world – the legendary grandes dames, the modern masterpieces of superlatives. But the majority of Europe’s hotels fall into that vast middle ground of averageness that is the three-star category. This is where airport chain hotels keep company with unlovely seafront carbuncles. And yet, between the functional and the unremarkable, there are some real treasures to be dug out: boutique hotels created out of a desire to make something beautiful; simple, rural hideaways following a sustainable lifestyle, homely places that have been run by the same convivial family for generations, perfectly happy sticking in their humble threestar category and excelling in their field.

The irony of the star-rating system is that the very things that prevent these small hotels from winning more stars are what keep them special: their intimate scale, limited space, listed buildings, form over functionality. A star rating system cannot distinguish between an heirloom Canaletto and a Jack Vettriano print, and favours a lift over a spiral staircase. As for charm, beauty, warmth – those qualities that make us fall in love with a certain hotel are so subjective that such things cannot be measured.

Three stars means old houses that i ‘There are some real treasures to be dug out’: Ca’n Gaià, a restored 18th-century finca in Mallorca

have not been senselessly altered: faded-grandeur chateaux and unpolished palazzi, reimagined fincas with a strong sense of place. Three stars are for the great romantics, for people who don’t like golf or the gym, for whom room size doesn’t matter so much as long, shuttered windows opening onto a wrought-iron balcony.

If you are happy to skip extravagant extras and dig a little deeper, you can find the kind of characterful boltholes where you will feel right at home, with a warm welcome, bags of charm and wonderful home-grown breakfasts – pleasures all enhanced by the self-congratulatory thought of what you have saved by staying there.

These small and special hotels are making three-star stays into an art form.