Handling guest reviews
Discover the full potential of guest reviews and learn how to address all types of feedback to benefit your business.
Congratulations on receiving your first review! Whether it's positive or negative, how you handle it can have a big impact. Positive feedback can improve your ranking and attract more bookings. But even negative reviews can be an opportunity for growth, and to show guests the human side of you as a host. In this step, we'll guide you through the importance of guest feedback and how to engage with it in a way that benefits you in the long run.
Understanding our guest reviews
Guest reviews are a crucial aspect of Booking.com as they offer potential guests an insight into the personal experiences of others who have stayed at your property. We ask all guests who have stayed at your property to provide a review. Note that reviews cannot be anonymous on Booking.com.
It's essential to keep in mind that reviews can heavily impact your conversion rate. Guests are more likely to book with you if they read positive reviews about your property. Reviews also provide a great opportunity for you to learn and improve. Constructive feedback can help you do more of what guests love and improve in areas that need attention.
Your guests will receive an email 48 hours after check-out, asking them to share their feedback. They then have three months to leave three types of feedback:
- A written review
- Review scores on several categories including cleanliness, comfort, value for money, facilities, location, and staff
- An overall Guest Review Score
All written reviews are thoroughly checked by our content moderators to ensure that they are genuine and do not violate any of our guidelines. Your reviews will be publicly visible on your property page for 36 months.
How to respond to guest reviews
Responding to positive reviews is a great way to show appreciation and thank your guests for their stay. However, when it comes to negative reviews, it's even more important to respond in order to reinforce your trustworthiness, reliability, and openness to feedback as an accommodation provider. We recommend acknowledging the effort that guests have taken to share their feedback, and responding with the intention of turning a negative into a positive.
You can respond to any written reviews you receive from your guests, and both their review and your response will be publicly visible on your property page.
Lastly, it's important to remember that a review reflects a person's subjective experience. Your response to a review shows other guests that you take feedback seriously and provides you with an opportunity to explain how you are addressing any issues raised.
Situations where guest reviews may be removed
You may request the removal of specific guest reviews, but know that we will only remove reviews in specific situations. These include:
- When the guest cancels their reservation and confirms they didn't stay
- The reservation is cancelled before the check-in time
- The review doesn't detail the guest's experience
- You cancelled the booking due to an invalid credit card
- The guest reviewed the wrong property
- The review is being used to blackmail you
- Or if it contains offensive or illegal content
Additionally, we will remove reviews that contain spam or fake content, impersonation, unauthorised personal information, or off-topic content.
Why your guest review score is important
At your property, guests have the opportunity to rate their overall experience on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Your Guest Review Score is calculated by averaging these scores from the past three years.
It's important to note that your review score is not based on the average of individual category ratings such as cleanliness, comfort, value for money, facilities, location, and staff.
Your Guest Review Score is one of the main things that guests look for when deciding whether they should book a stay at your property. In fact, it’s so important that if you do not have a Guest Review Score on Booking.com yet, we will import your property’s score from other travel platforms that have similar standards to Booking.com. Once you do have a Guest Review Score on Booking.com, we will remove your external score.
Before you continue…
Congratulations on completing another step of your journey with Booking.com! Before we move on, let's review some key takeaways:
- Reviews and your replies to them are visible to the public on Booking.com
- Your Guest Review Score is the average of scores submitted by all your guests following their stays in the last 36 months
- Reviews are only removed if they violate Booking.com's moderation guidelines
FAQs
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Booking.com provides guidelines for guests to understand and write reviews that adhere to their policies. Reviews should be based on personal experience and not include promotional content, personal information or discriminatory language.
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Booking.com allows partners to respond to guest reviews to show appreciation, address concerns or misunderstandings. Responses should be polite, concise and adhere to the guidelines.
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The Guest Review Score on Booking.com is based on guests' ratings of their overall experience from 1 to 10, averaged over the past 3 years. It's not based on category ratings such as cleanliness or location.