Plan your own trip

Research affordable five-star hotels in any country

Use this prompt to find five-star and near-five-star hotels that may be unusually good value in the country you are visiting.

I have visited many of the countries in this guide. But I did a lot of research before travelling — this is how I research nowadays.

How it works

Select the country you are travelling to.
Copy the generated research prompt.
Paste it into a fresh Claude or ChatGPT session.

This prompt is designed for Claude, ChatGPT, or another research-capable AI assistant. Start a fresh session rather than continuing an old one.

Country or territory

Research prompt (editable — tweak it before copying if you like)

You are a specialist travel research assistant working for the editorial website **50fivestarhotels.com**. Your task is to research candidate hotels for the region: **[REGION]**.

The site is a curated guide to **affordable luxury travel ideas** — not a directory of cheap hotels. The editorial test for every candidate is:

> "Does this hotel make a reasonably seasoned traveller think: I didn't know I could have that kind of stay at that price?"

For context, here are the countries and territories already represented on the site: Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Egypt, France, Georgia, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam

---

### Step 1 — Identify the strongest destinations in the region

Before researching any hotels, first identify the **5–8 cities or destinations** within **[REGION]** where five-star or near-five-star hotel quality is structurally underpriced relative to Western European or North American equivalents.

For each destination, briefly explain:
- Why luxury pricing is lower here
- Whether the destination itself is interesting enough to justify a trip
- A rough safety/political risk level: Low / Moderate / High

Reject any destination with a **High** risk rating from further consideration in this session unless you have a specific editorial reason to flag it as a future watch.

---

### Step 2 — Find the best qualifying hotel in each destination

For each destination that passes Step 1, identify the **1–3 most compelling hotel candidates**. Focus on hotels that combine:

- Strong value versus the local five-star market
- Genuine character (heritage, design, boutique, wellness — not generic chain towers)
- A location and surrounding destination worth writing about
- Visually interesting enough to anchor editorial photography

Search Booking.com, Google Hotels, TripAdvisor and recent travel publications for evidence.

---

### Step 3 — Produce a scored longlist of 15–20 candidates

For each candidate hotel, provide:

**Hotel name and city**
**Five-star category** (use one of these exactly):
- True international five-star
- Local / booking-site five-star
- Heritage-value five-star
- Business five-star bargain
- Near-luxury exception
- Questionable five-star

**Typical price range** (shoulder season, standard room, per night in €)

**Booking.com score** (if available)

**Preliminary score** across these six factors (score each out of the maximum, then total):

| Factor | Max | Your score |
|---|---|---|
| Price/value vs local five-star market | 25 | |
| Hotel character or luxury feel | 20 | |
| Review strength and consistency | 15 | |
| Location usefulness | 15 | |
| Nearby sights, food and experiences | 15 | |
| Risk level and hidden drawbacks | 10 | |
| **Total** | **100** | |

**Scoring adjustments** (apply before finalising total):
- Exceptional heritage hotel: +5
- Exceptional boutique or design hotel: +5
- Interesting independent hotel: +3
- Generic chain hotel: 0
- Visual/photography potential (score 0–10, weight at 10% of total): add this figure ×0.1

**Adjusted total score:**

**Verdict label** (apply the correct one):
- 85–100: Exceptional value
- 75–84: Strong value
- 65–74: Good value
- 55–64: Conditional value
- Below 55: Reject

**One-sentence editorial case** for the hotel (why would a reader book this?)

**One-sentence risk or drawback flag** (what could disappoint a reader?)

---

### Step 4 — Apply hard disqualification rules

Before proceeding to the shortlist, reject any candidate that meets one or more of these conditions:

- Booking.com score below 8.0
- Regularly prices above €250 per night even in shoulder season
- Value is primarily driven by a temporary promotion or flash sale
- The hotel is cheap primarily because of decline in quality or maintenance
- The destination has no independent travel interest
- High safety/political risk (already excluded in Step 1)

List any hotels you are rejecting at this stage and state which rule applies.

---

### Step 5 — Produce a final shortlist of 8–12 candidates

Rank surviving candidates by adjusted score. Present the shortlist as a clean table:

| Rank | Hotel | City | Category | Price range (€) | Score | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Then for each of the **top 5**, provide a fuller summary including:

- What makes this hotel editorially interesting beyond the price
- The 3 strongest nearby attractions, food experiences or photography opportunities
- An honest assessment of any remaining risks or drawbacks
- An SEO note: what search terms a page about this hotel would likely rank for

---

### Step 6 — Flag your top 3 recommendations

Identify the 3 hotels you most strongly recommend for full editorial profile development. For each one, explain in 2–3 sentences why it earns a place.

Then apply the **in-country replacement test**. The hotels already published for **[REGION]** are:

[EXISTING HOTELS]

For each of your top 3, state clearly whether it is more compelling than the weakest currently published hotel in **[REGION]**, and why. If no hotel is yet published for **[REGION]**, say so and judge each recommendation on its own merits instead.

---

### Step 7 — List all rejected candidates

Provide a brief rejected list: hotel name, city, and the single primary reason for rejection. This record prevents the same hotels from being re-researched in future sessions.

---

### Output format rules

- Do not pad responses with caveats, disclaimers or meta-commentary
- Be direct: score confidently, recommend clearly
- If data is unavailable for a hotel, say so once and move on
- Use the exact verdict labels and five-star category names defined above
- The final shortlist table must be clean and copy-pasteable

Reading the output

How to judge the results

The prompt asks the assistant to score every candidate out of 100 across six factors — price and value against the local five-star market, hotel character, review strength, location usefulness, nearby sights and food, and risk. Bonuses reward heritage, boutique and independent hotels; generic chain towers get nothing extra. The totals map to exact verdict labels: Exceptional value (85–100), Strong value (75–84), Good value (65–74), Conditional value (55–64) and Reject below that.

Pay as much attention to the destinations as to the hotels. The prompt is destination-first by design: destination quality and hotel quality carry equal weight, because a beautiful hotel in a dull city makes a weak trip, while a slightly imperfect hotel beside something extraordinary can make a great one. If the assistant recommends a hotel but struggles to name three genuinely interesting things nearby, treat that as a warning.

A good session should also reject aggressively. Expect a healthy rejected list at the end — hotels priced above €250 a night, review scores below 8.0, or value that depends on a flash sale. If everything scores highly, the research is probably too generous, and it is worth running the prompt again in a fresh session.

Editor notes

What to check before trusting the output

AI research is a starting point. Before adding a hotel to the site, manually verify the current star rating, recent reviews, typical prices, location, safety context, and whether the hotel still feels like good value.

The same applies if you are researching for your own trip. Check the hotel on at least two booking platforms, read the most recent reviews rather than the average score, and confirm the price for your actual dates — shoulder-season bargains can vanish in peak weeks.