Understanding external review scores

External review scores are imported from other trusted travel websites for properties that are also listed on our platform. We import and display these external review scores for properties on our platform that don’t yet have a Booking.com guest review score. We do this because review scores – whether external or from Booking.com – are crucial for helping properties get discovered and booked, and can do a lot to help earn guests’ trust.

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Qualifying for external review scores

In order to calculate a guest review score for a property on our platform, we require at least three separate guest reviews of that property. A property that doesn’t have enough reviews on our platform may still have more than three reviews on other travel websites that it’s listed on. In this case, we import these external review scores to help this property get discovered.

We only import external review scores from travel websites that we trust, and which 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.

Displaying external review scores

External review scores are most common for home and apartment-type properties, which tend to receive fewer Booking.com guest reviews. If your property qualifies for an external review score, it will be displayed on the search results page and on your property page. This score is displayed on a white background to differentiate it from the Booking.com guest review score, which is displayed on a blue background. External review scores are a numerical score out of ten. We also display the number of external reviews used to calculate that score, but don’t include any external written reviews.

If your property has one or two written reviews from Booking.com guests, they’ll be available in the reviews section of your property page along with your external review score.

External review scores are automatically displayed for all eligible properties, regardless of the score. It’s not possible to opt out of displaying this review score. We stop displaying external review scores as soon as your property has received three reviews from Booking.com guests. At this point, the external review score is replaced with the Booking.com guest review score.