YORK’S luxury Cedar Court Grand hotel may finally receive coveted five-star status later thus year.

The £20 million hotel in Station Rise opened in May last year, when it was widely heralded as the city’s first five star establishment in a boost to the city’s tourism economy.

An AA inspector has now visited the hotel, posing as a guest.

General manager Maria Florou said the inspector revealed who he was to staff as he was checking out, and then gave her a three-hour debriefing although she could not go into details.

Visit York and Welcome To Yorkshire have also given their support.

She said she was expecting at least one and possibly two more visits in coming months by other mystery guests from the AA, and she hoped the hotel would win five stars before the end of the year.

As well as top class customer service, hotels wanting five stars must also provide a range of facilities including a concierge service, a valet for parking customers’ cars and 24-hour in-room dining, and every customer must be shown to their bedroom and shown all the facilities.

Maria said business was continuing to grow at the Grand, with all rooms booked on some nights this summer and a waiting list of would-be guests waiting for cancellations.

She said guests over the past year had included Premiership footballers, overseas royalty, big name actors and foreign politicians, although rules of confidentiality meant she could not name names.

She said while the hotel had not been helped by the recession, business had been boosted by the “staycation” phenomenon, whereby people holiday at home instead of travelling abroad because of the credit crunch.

Maria, 39, took over at the hotel earlier this year after working at other Cedar Court Group hotels in Wakefield, Huddersfield and Bradford. The hotel’s first general manager, Andrew Coney, left fewer than four months after it opened its doors, after being appointed for a period of one year to manage the redevelopment of the former railway headquarters into a luxury hotel.