How I score
a hotel.
Four criteria, each from one to ten, averaged into a single number. No weighting, no sponsored scores — the same yardstick for every hotel.
The four criteria
Service
How a hotel treats you when nothing goes wrong — and how it recovers when something does. Arrival, anticipation, and the small unscripted moments that training alone can't fake.
Design
Whether the architecture, rooms and public spaces feel specific to the place or merely generic luxury — light, materials, acoustics, and how the building actually lives.
Food & Drink
Breakfast first — the hardest meal to get right — then the bar and restaurant. Quality, consistency, and whether it's somewhere you'd return to even without a room.
Location
Not just the address, but how the hotel sits in its neighbourhood — what's walkable, what's worth leaving for, and how easily you arrive.
The scale
Each criterion is scored from 1 to 10. The overall Archivist Score is simply their average — no weighting, no rounding in a hotel's favour. A 9 is rare and means genuinely exceptional; a 6 is a decent stay with real compromises.
Independence
Wherever possible I pay for my own stays. When a hotel hosts me, I say so in the review — and it never changes the score. No paid placements, no affiliate links, no scores in exchange for access.
Who's behind the score
I'm Konrad Xu — trained inside hotels (Le Méridien Munich, Aman Shanghai) and heading to EHL Lausanne. The score reflects that training: the view from behind the desk, not just in front of it.