Improving your Guest Review Score
Your Guest Review Score is an average of all the ratings you’ve received – from one to ten – from guests who’ve stayed at your property. It gives you insight into what guests think about your hospitality. A high Guest Review Score leads to better visibility on our platform.
What’s in this article
Benefits of a good Guest Review Score
A high Guest Review Score is a type of verified review. It lets other travellers know that other people have enjoyed staying at your property and can help you attract new potential guests. Many travellers on our platform use the Guest Review Score to filter their search results. A high score can increase your visibility in these searches.
A high Guest Review Score also helps you qualify for:
Checking your Guest Review Score
Follow these steps to check your Guest Review Score:
- Log in to the extranet
- Click on Guest reviews and select Guest reviews
Here, you’ll also be able to see other things guests are saying about your property and respond to reviews.
Keep in mind that the order of guest reviews on your page depends on the language the guest is browsing in. So, if your browser is set to Spanish, these reviews will appear first, followed by English, and then any other languages. Reviews with scores, but without comments will appear lower down the page, and you cannot respond to them as they must have a title or a comment.
Improving your Guest Review Score
You can improve your Guest Review Score by looking after your travellers’ needs at every stage of the booking process.
Before a guest arrives at your property, ensure that:
- All of the information regarding your property is correct and accurate
- Photos of your property are up to date
- Details of their booking are confirmed and you’ve reached out to your guests to see if you can help further
- You’ve read and replied to previous reviews and tried to fix or mitigate any problems former guests may have indicated
When a guest arrives at your property, please consider:
- Offering a complimentary drink or snack while they’re waiting to check in.
- Preparing any resources they might need at the property (for example, a map, drinking water or ear plugs if the location or your property can get noisy).
- Making sure your guests know they can contact you if there are any urgent complaints, so you can resolve any issues on the spot. You can do this at the front desk or by setting up a WhatsApp/SMS feedback process for your property, which you can also later use to send a satisfaction survey.
After checkout, you can continue building a positive relationship with travellers by:
- Encouraging them to leave a review on our platform.
- Providing an incentive for them to return, such as offering a discount for future stays.
- Sending them a satisfaction survey to help you improve the overall guest experience.
By selecting the correct facilities options, your property will have more likelihood of appearing when a future guest searches with multiple filters through the accommodation on our platform.
Replying to your guest reviews
Reviews – either negative or positive – are a great opportunity to learn and improve guests’ experiences.
We recommend replying to any reviews you receive in a warm and friendly manner that will encourage future guests to book with you.
When replying to reviews, here are some things to keep in mind:
- Use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when responding to positive reviews and ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ when replying to negative reviews. This way, you celebrate the hard work of your whole team, while also taking responsibility for anything that might have gone wrong.
- Thank the guest for their review, whether it’s positive or negative.
- Personalise your response, so that it doesn’t feel like you’re replying with templates.
- If something is unclear, ask for more information to clarify the issue.
Aim for a fair and objective reply.
Want to find out more about responding to guest reviews?
External review scores
Your account is automatically set up to receive guest reviews after setting your account to open/bookable. If you do not have a Guest Review Score yet, we'll import and display external review scores from other trusted travel websites.
These reviews are imported from third-party travel websites that we trust and have similar standards to our platform. We review all external review scores every few weeks to make sure they’re accurate and up-to-date. We don’t display written reviews from other travel websites. As soon as you receive your first guest review on our platform, we’ll replace the external review score with your Booking.com Guest Review Score.
