so then, how does one get a hotel in the cities marked with (*)

paris etc

They must have accidently down graded their hotel

Acparker, she's referring to the 'create a hotel' page, not to the number of stars an already existing hotel has. On the Create page it says:
"Choose a city where you want to have your first hotel.
You don't have enough money to build in cities marked with *."

And sorry Bailey, I don't know the answer, I wondered the exact same thing and came across this topic whilst looking for an answer.