"A few years ago you almost never found mini-bars in the one- or two-diamond properties," said Kris Rashedi, director of industry evaluations for the American Automobile Association, which ranks hotels from one to five diamonds.

RANKING WORLD HOTELS - World travelers responding online to the annual Travelers Choice survey by the consumer travel Web site Tripadvisor.com have ranked hotels in a multitude of categories, including the 100 top luxury hotels.

TripAdvisor.com, best known for its customer reviews of more than 135,000 hotels worldwide, recently introduced a new tool that lets visitors sort hotels in a particular city by price, neighborhood or star rating, in addition to the site's "popularity index," which ranks hotels based on customer feedback and guidebook ratings.

The search engine also ranks hotels, filtered by price, reviews, and an "ecstacy" rating.

The entertainment site includes nationally ranked hotels and restaurants.

Level Travel, an organization in Coatesville, Pa., has a Web site (www.leveltravel.com) that ranks hotels and restaurants in major cities on their accessibility for four groups: older travelers and travelers with mobility, hearing or vision impairment.

Because corporate travel reimbursement policies often spell out the price level and even the hotel brands an employee may use, many frequent business travelers can readily rank domestic hotels on the five-tiered scale.

(July 4) discussed the many ways to rank hotels.