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Relais & Châteaux is an association with headquarters in Paris, France of more than 450 hotels and restaurants throughout the world. Its main goal is to promote and provide various services its members. So, it seems like Relais & Châteaux is catering primarily to their needs - where do we, travelers, fit into this picture?

The answer is simple. The Relais & Châteaux membership is limited to establishments that meet specific criteria and standards maintained by the Association. Thus, if a hotel or a restaurant is one of its members, we can expect a better quality of service with higher degree of certainty.

These expectations are based primarily on rather strict admission process. It includes several steps:

• Potential candidate presents an application (called dossier). This dossier should contain detailed information about the applicant including photos and marketing material. Note that applicants cannot belong to other associations similar in goals to Relais & Châteaux (obviously, one of them is The Leading Hotels of the World with headquarters in New York and slightly smaller number of members).
• A decision is made as to whether reject the applicant based on the information provided. If the applicant is not rejected, it is scheduled for a review and anonymous audit. The audit is actually conducted by sending incognito auditors to the applicant's establishment. Fees incurred during anonymous visits are paid from funds provided by the applicant itself (€1500 for hotels and €600 for restaurants).
• Review and one or more anonymous quality audits are conducted, and a summary report is prepared. Additional information may be required from the applicant during this process; personal interviews may be conducted as well.
• Board of Directors makes a decision regarding the acceptance of the candidate as a new member. Such decisions are made once a year.

The admission procedure by itself is not a guarantee for the higher quality of service. Nevertheless, any screening such as described above increases chances that your staying at hotels that belong to the Relais & Châteaux will result in a satisfactory experience. Another important factor resulting from the association admission and membership policies is that you may expect more overall consistency in quality of services when you use a hotel or restaurant which belongs to the chain.

For example, one of the most important requirements for members is their compliance with the founding values defined by the Association as 5Cs: "Courtesy, Charm, Character, Calm, Cuisine." Another requirement that will appeal to many potential customers is that members should offer services with a minimum of 4 stars rating and have a capacity of less than 100 guest rooms. This already tells us a lot about chain members. By the way, the membership itself is rather costly - total admission fees (as of 2007) are €10,000 (in addition to audit fees and other charges). Annual fees vary from member to member; on average they are about €15,000.

From the above description, we can expect that Relais & Châteaux hotels are expensive. Prices will depend on a country, specific location and season - in cities like Paris rates will start at about €300 - €400; at the same time, in a French countryside you will find hotels with prices that start at €200 - €250.

Higher quality standards are not the only advantage in dealing with Relais & Châteaux properties. If you rely on the chain's reputation, you will find that its Web site is a very good tool for researching hotels and booking them. You can search by destinations and drill down to specific locations, and it's very easy to check at once room availability in many hotels. All related Web pages are nicely done and very friendly in use. In fact, when you research hotels on Relais & Châteaux web site, you do more than that. The site gives you immediate access to all information that relates not only to hotels and their features, but also to the area including local attractions and recreational activities.

We like very much a lot of visual information available on the site - photos and maps. This make your homework very efficient. For example, you can specify a country, let's say Italy, and in one shot verify availability of all Relais & Châteaux Italian hotels at any given date. Using a simple navigation tool, you can keep checking the availability within the range of two weeks. Since each hotel list entry has a picture, you can see if you like the hotel style. There is also a price range information for all hotels in the list. Each entry has a link with all the details about hotel you like.

Another way of planning your trips is to use "Destinations" and "Itineraries" links available for all countries where Relais & Châteaux has properties. Both will open photo galleries with pictures representative of particular locations or regions in the country. From this point you can drill down to hotels, and a Google-style geographic map that will show hotel locations and their proximity to destinations. You can also research hotels by "Theme stays" (like culture, spot, wedding, family, etc.), "Last minute getaway" and access special offers.

This approach is different from the traditional tourist guides (Frommer's, Fodor's, etc.) that are assumed to be independent from the establishments which they describe or recommend. Relais & Châteaux does not make any attempt to hide the fact that it promotes its members. In our view, the difference is that Relais & Châteaux makes much more stronger and more convincing statement that it stands behind what it promotes. And in our experience it works better.

By the way, Relais & Châteaux has its own guide - you can order it for free (S&H will be charged or pick it up if you stay in a chain hotel). Another option is the guide PDF version available as a free download on Relais & Châteaux Web site.