Everything you need to know about Guest Review Scores

When a guest books their stay on our platform, they can leave your property a review and choose an overall score that reflects their experience. In this article, we’ll cover how guest reviews work and how Guest Review Scores are generated.

What’s in this article?

How we collect reviews

Once a guest checks out, we send an email to ask them to review their stay with you. They have 90 days to do this. Read more about the conditions of leaving a guest review here.

What guests can rate when they submit a review

Guests select an overall score from 1 to 10 to rate their experience at your property. This is the only question guests are required to answer before they can submit their review. 

The average of these overall scores accumulated over the last three years and received from different guests becomes your Guest Review Score. We display your Guest Review Score once you’ve received your first review.

Guests can also rate other services and property details, such as: 

• Cleanliness
• Comfort
• Value
• Facilities
• Location
• Staff

These ratings are optional and don’t count toward your Guest Review Score. The reason we include one overall score is to reflect your guests’ experience rather than focusing on the smaller details, which can’t be controlled by the property owners, such as property location. 

Guests can then provide more optional ratings, but these are about different services, like WiFi and breakfast. They also don’t count toward your Guest Review Score.

All reviews have an open text question option to encourage guests to provide feedback. This is optional, but their responses can give you helpful insights into your property’s performance. They can also be useful for new guests to find out more about your property before booking a stay. Read more about guest reviews here.

How a property’s Guest Review Score is calculated

Your property’s score is automatically determined by calculating the mean sum of all your overall scores. 

As a platform, we don’t play any role in deciding your score. We only facilitate the process of collecting your reviews from guests. Your individual scores reflect actual guest experiences and contribute directly to your Guest Review Score.

Why a Guest Review Score can be different from the category ratings

We collect the overall score for each review separately from the ratings guests give for different categories. We do this because the six categories don’t always cover everything a guest might consider when they rate their stay, while the overall score represents their experience as a whole. 

This means it’s normal for the Guest Review Score to be different from the category ratings.

How to see guest reviews for a property

To see how your Guest Review Score and specific category scores have changed over time and what you can do to improve them, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Extranet

2. Click the Guest reviews tab

3. Go to Guest reviews in the drop-down menu to see your Guest Review Score or to Guest experience to see what guests think of their stays at your property

How long reviews stay on a property’s page

Reviews stay on your reviews page for 36 months. After that time, they’re archived automatically.

Once reviews are archived, your Guest Review Score will also be recalculated using the reviews that are still online.

How to increase your Guest Review Score

Guest reviews are an important factor when travelers decide what accommodations to book for their trip. Here are some tips on how to increase your Guest Review Score:

• Manage guests’ expectations – ensure that the content on your property page is an accurate reflection of what a guest can expect when staying at your property
• Consider providing breakfast – breakfast is the last meal guests will have with you, so always make an effort to provide the best you can
• Deliver great service – going that extra mile for your guests helps ensure that they have a memorable experience
• Comfort and cleanliness – make sure your property respects all sanitary requirements, and make it as comfortable as possible for your guests

Get more inspiration for delivering great guest experiences by diving into these additional resources. 

Removing or changing a review

By law, we have to provide all guests that stay at a property with the option to leave a review. We encourage our guests to always leave an honest and fair review based on their experience. 

Some guests who made a booking but didn’t stay have the right to leave a review. Read our policy on non-stayed reservation reviews in the content guidelines here.

Find more info regarding the removal of a guest review here. Also, if you’ve had a bad experience with a guest, you can report it via the Extranet or Pulse app through the report guest misconduct feature.

If a guest reached out to you directly and informed you about making a mistake while leaving a review, you can advise them to correct their feedback by logging in their Booking.com guest account or reaching out to a customer service agent.

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