Live From ILTM: Inside Forbes Travel Guide’s 67-Year Legacy of Defining Luxury

Forbes Travel Guide has been the gold standard for luxury hotel ratings for more than 60 years, and its anonymous inspections remain one of the travel industry’s most influential forces. In this ⁠ILTM⁠ (International Luxury Travel Market) episode, recorded live in Cannes, Hermann Elger, CEO of Forbes Travel Guide, joins Afar cofounder Joe Diaz to reveal how the guide maintains its integrity while expanding beyond hotels into cruise lines, air travel, and emerging luxury categories.

The conversation covers how Forbes protects inspector anonymity—even from Hermann himself—and why the Standards Advisory Committee includes industry voices to ensure ratings evolve with traveler expectations. Hermann also explores how the five-star standard has become synonymous with excellence across industries and shares its expansion into river cruises, the Edge List for emerging properties, Star Bars, and the Icons List for legendary establishments.

Transcript

Joe: I’m Joe Diaz, Afar cofounder, and welcome to View From Afar, a podcast that spotlights the people and the ideas shaping the future of travel. In this special series, I’m coming to you live from ILTM, one of the most important travel shows that happens every year.

ILTM stands for the International Luxury Travel Market, and the show takes place in a fittingly luxurious city, Cannes, France. The conversations that happen here influence how we think about travel for years to come. Afar editor in chief Julia Cosgrove and I sat down with leaders across the travel industry, from visionary hoteliers to destination innovators, to discuss the trends, challenges, and ideas that are driving hospitality forward. We want to understand what truly motivates these leaders, how their personal stories, values, and visions shape the experiences they create for travelers.

Be sure to follow the show to hear all our conversations from ILTM.

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Hermann Elger, CEO of the Forbes Travel Guide. When Hermann joined Forbes in 2022, he brought with him a deep relationship with the hospitality industry. Hermann followed his father into the hotel industry, working his way up from doorman to general manager (GM) at five‑star properties across North America to chief operating officer of Baccarat Hotels and Resorts. In fact, he helped the Baccarat New York earn its first Forbes Travel Guide Five‑Star award in 2018. Under his leadership, the Forbes Travel Guide launched new rating systems, including the first global rating system for cruise ships, and in 2024, the inaugural Verified Air Travel Awards, both of which we’ll hear about today.

Hermann, thanks for joining us. Super excited to have you here. Big fans of Forbes Travel Guide and Forbes Five‑Star. You were born into a hospitality family, and you’ve grown up and made a career out of the industry. I’m curious, how have you seen luxury hospitality evolve in recent years?

Hermann: Thanks, Joe. Well, first of all, it’s great to be here in the Afar apartment in Cannes. So many great memories over the years of, you know, looking out and connecting with colleagues. So thanks for the invite to be here.

You know, I’m often asked that question and I think back and yes, I’m second‑generation hotelier, fortunate to have grown up in hotels and seen them run firsthand and seen how they’ve evolved. But I think probably the biggest evolution in my mind is the scale of how many luxury properties are available now—just how broad that segment has become, benefiting the traveler, of course: being able to travel more places, stay more places, and have more amazing experiences.

Joe: How would you put your finger on what luxury means in today’s world?

Hermann: You know, I don’t think I’d be the first one to say that “luxury” may be an overused term. When we talk about it, I’d like to refer to hotels as luxurious versus luxury, which can cover so many things in so many different segments. But I break it down to more offerings, better at offering luxurious stays, better at fine‑tuning the details you get through that. And better at being able to offer more things to more people that are more kind of niche. Your luxury offering is not a one‑stop‑shop luxury experience in a city, for example. There are options now, and I think that’s great.

Joe: So you’ve famously stated that the Forbes ratings are not bought or given, but they’re earned. Why do you think this kind of independent, anonymous human rating is so essential at this particular moment in time? And how do you keep those reviewers anonymous in such a time of, you know, public age?

Hermann: Sure. Keeping the reviewers anonymous is certainly a task and something that we take very seriously. The integrity of the rating guide is something that we hold above all, in terms of the ethos or the importance of why we are the stewards of a rating guide that has been around since 1958. We take this very seriously. I, as the CEO, am not able to access the results from the ratings inspections until they are announced, and that’s by design. The integrity around that rating process is very important.

Now, that’s not to say that within our organization we don’t have tools that can help you be better and help service‑driven companies deliver better service. If you do that, it would follow that since those products are very good, you’re going to deliver better service, hence potentially a better outcome to your rating.

But there is no way to manipulate that ratings outcome. The integrity around that process and the fact that it’s been managed by our president of ratings, Amanda Frazier, for nearly 20 years is something that really will stand up to any scrutiny, I would say. Anyone who carries that rating at the recommended level—the four‑star or the five‑star level—can be very proud of it.

One other thing I’d like to mention on that point is that the rating guide is an integrity‑based rating guide, but the real story behind the rating guide are the standards by which we inspect. Those standards are created by the Standards Advisory Committee. These are 24 individuals who are very renowned professionals in hospitality, who convene four times a year to determine what the standards are by which the rating guide operates.

The standards by which we inspect are not mine. They’re not Amanda’s. They’re the voice of the industry and the voice of the client. Anyone who works with these standards is saying, this is what the client is expecting. This is what the industry is expecting. We need to look at those and then hopefully perform well against them and get a great rating.

Joe: I’m glad you brought up the point of standards. There are so many awards. Ultimately, it does really come down to those standards that are the foundation of why you’re giving the ratings you’re giving and why the hotels are really earning the ratings. And by the way, it’s beyond hotels, right?

Hermann: Sure. We now rate hotels, restaurants, and spas. We also work with cruise lines and recently announced river cruise ratings. To that point, the cruise industry also has its Standards Advisory Committee, which convenes 24 renowned professionals across the industry to determine the standards by which the Forbes Travel Guide will measure quality on the high seas.

Joe: Talk to us a little bit about how the ratings have evolved to capture things that travelers today hold more dear—things like cultural authenticity, regenerative practices, transformative experiences that can’t really be measured in a quantitative kind of way. How do you and the team work to try to evolve the standards to really meet the moment?

Hermann: Sure. Within those standards, only 25 percent are directly related to the facility and the other 75 percent are related to the service and the experience. We like to say those standards tend to evolve 3–5 percent over the course of each year. It may not be a big change in the standards year over year, but if you look back 5 or 10 years, they tend to be quite different. And if you go back into the ’80s or even ’70s, we have some funny stories of what was relevant then and no longer is now. We’ve been stewards of the rating guide since 1958, so if you look back further, you’ll see standards that were relevant then and no longer are now. So I don’t think you’re going to see any game-changing references to the standards year over year, but over time they certainly evolve and they are what the client is looking for. They are what drive the value proposition in luxury. They are what is relevant to travelers these days, and I think that’s a very important distinction.

Joe: In recent years, you’ve debuted new rating systems, including bringing a more discerning eye to air travel with the Forbes Verified Air Travel Awards. What’s bringing about this expansion? And you mentioned river cruise. What else is on your radar and coming up next?

Hermann: Yeah. So to clarify how that all works, the Forbes Travel Guide has a star rating system, again around since 1958, and that’s the rating system used for hotels, spas, restaurants, cruise lines.

Then over the last two years, we’ve launched other announcements throughout the year. We launched the Air Travel Awards, which, you’re right, [are] voted on by the most traveled people in the world, focusing on the best in air travel. We also launched the Edge List, a list dedicated to travel spots off the beaten path. We launched the Star Bars, which are the best bars in the world, located within hotels, which we like to emphasize. And then this year we launched in December the Icons List, and the Icons List is just a remarkably fun list, which I love the fact that it comes out during the holidays because it’s hotels who have carried the same name for at least 100 years and also carry a five-star ranking. So if you want to talk about a bucket list, the Icons List is a just a remarkable collection of hotels around the world.

Joe: Maybe give us a couple examples of these icon hotels who’ve been around for over 100 years and have carried the same name and brand.

Hermann: The Icons List [is] the ultimate bucket list of travel. Yeah. Let’s see, as I think through the list, some that just jump out right away. The Ritz in Paris, for example. That’s a perfect example. Legacy established for so many years and even after all these years, continues to operate at the ultimate highest level. The St. Regis New York is another great example of that. And then you’ve got the one who’s been around the longest in terms of their star rating, which is the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. So three examples, but many more to visit, spectacular properties, all of them.

Joe: Thanks for adding a couple more to my bucket list; 2026 will bring the 68th Forbes Travel Guide Star Awards. Pull back the curtain for us a little bit. What does it really take to create these lists and get to that moment?

Hermann: It is a ton of work. First of all, these hotels are all visited a minimum of one time, some up to four times. Independent incognito. Tonight, overnight inspection data generated through evaluators is passed to a ratings team that is analyzed for consistency across previous inspections, and then that is passed on to another division of the ratings team for analysis, [and] finally comes out with the final list, which is announced in February. We now announce it in Monaco at the annual summit. And, uh, yeah, it’s just a great time of the year to celebrate.

Nearly 100 countries are covered now with our rating guide, and we’re just very proud of the fact that those standards that I talked about are a measurement used throughout the world. And the beneficiary is the traveler knowing that when they select a hotel that’s rated at either the recommended four-star or five-star level, they’re getting a level of consistency and commitment that really cannot be measured in other ways. So we’re very excited about that.

Joe: What do you wish today’s traveler knew about the Forbes Five‑Star rating system that they might not know today, or that’s just a challenge to get through to them?

Hermann: Well, I think, you know, there’s no need to dig so deep into necessarily if you’re a traveler. But I think the important thing is to be able to recognize that, you know, you have a lot of choices, a lot of phenomenal luxury brands out there, and a lot of great ways that the marketing and storytelling is told. But you have this one basis of truth, which is the Forbes Travel Guide, which at the end of the day, you can refer to that to be sure that, hey, we’re digging really deep in the pocket. We’re going to spend a lot on this vacation, and it’s a five-star rated property. You can have real confidence in that buying decision. Or maybe you say, you know what? We’re looking to go somewhere. We’re looking for a different experience. And in this destination I see that there are four-star rated hotels. Complete confidence that that’s rare earth. And then the recommended properties again, phenomenal properties around the world. But just have that confidence in knowing that when you see that star rating on that property, you’re making a good choice.

Joe: You travel a ton and you’re always on the road, so you get to see a lot of things. You turned me on to destinations that weren’t on my radar that blew my mind in terms of quality of hotels, like in Macau. What right now is blowing your mind in the space?

Hermann: Well, you’re right, I remember we talked about Macau, and I think the way they were able to push the levels of quality and creativity and luxury is really remarkable. I’m a big fan of the destinations less traveled. That’s why we launched the Edge List. These are properties that you can go to and they may not be in the more established, but you can again have confidence in those. I like anywhere that is really trying to push the envelope and create something new and special, authentic, really relevant. But at the end of the day, it’s really driven and based in that foundation of great service. Really taking care of the client is the most important.

Joe: Thanks for joining us for this special episode of View From Afar, recorded live at ILTM in Cannes. In the show notes, you’ll find links to everything we discussed today, as well as the website and social media handles for the Forbes Travel Guide. Be sure to follow along this week to hear more interviews with industry experts.

You can find more Views From Afar on Afar.com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok—we’re at @AfarMedia.

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This has been View From Afar, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland, with assistance from Jen Flowers, Julia Cosgrove, and Joe Diaz. Music composition from Epidemic Sound.

This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast network. Visit Airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to its other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.