Booking.com is committed to providing reliable and helpful reviews from real guests to empower you to make informed decisions about your travel plans. We strive to ensure that our review system is fair, transparent, and accurate by adhering to a set of guidelines that promote quality and integrity.
How We Calculate Your Overall Score
Each review score you see on Booking.com is based on a simple, yet effective system. Each guest gives a score between 1 and 10, and we add up all these scores to get a total. This total is then divided by the number of reviews received to determine the overall score.
In some locations, such as Malta, Iceland, Australia, Greece, Brazil and North Carolina, we’re currently testing a new system called weighted reviews. This means that more recent reviews have a greater impact on the overall score.
For further insight, guests can also provide individual subscores for specific aspects of their stay, such as location, cleanliness, staff, comfort, facilities, value for money, and free Wi-Fi. It’s important to note that subscores and overall scores are submitted independently, so there’s no direct link between them.
Ensuring Authenticity and Accuracy
We take review integrity seriously. Our team, along with automated systems, diligently works to detect and remove fake reviews. If we uncover any fraudulent activity, we take appropriate action against those responsible.
You can also help us maintain the integrity of our reviews! If you spot anything suspicious, please report it to our Customer Service team so our Fraud team can investigate further.
Review Guidelines: What We Allow and What We Don’t
Our goal is to publish every review, both positive and negative, to offer a balanced perspective. However, we won’t display any review that contains:
- Impersonation: Reviews claiming to be written by someone they’re not.
- Violations of our review guidelines.
To maintain the relevance of reviews, we only accept reviews submitted within 3 months of checkout. We may also stop showing reviews after 36 months or if the property undergoes a change of ownership.
Staying Informed: Reading and Sorting Reviews
When you view multiple reviews, the most recent ones will appear at the top of the list. However, we take into consideration other factors like the review’s language and whether it includes comments or just a rating. You can also sort and filter reviews based on the time of year, score, or other criteria to help you find the information you need.
External Reviews: Getting the Big Picture
We sometimes include external reviews from other well-known travel websites. We clearly indicate when this is the case to provide a comprehensive view of the property’s reputation.
Our Guiding Principles
We want to ensure that Booking.com’s review system is both informative and family-friendly. Our guidelines promote open and honest feedback without tolerating hate speech, discrimination, threats, sexually explicit content, violence, or the promotion of illegal activities.
All reviews must be genuine and unique to the guest. We don’t allow property partners to post reviews on behalf of guests or offer incentives for positive reviews. Additionally, we prohibit attempts to unfairly lower a competitor’s rating by submitting negative reviews.
Respecting Privacy
We understand the importance of protecting the privacy of our users. Booking.com takes steps to obscure sensitive information, such as email addresses, phone numbers, website addresses, social media accounts, and similar details.
Disclaimer
Remember, the opinions expressed in reviews are those of Booking.com customers and properties, not Booking.com. We do not take responsibility for the content of reviews or responses. We act as a distributor, but not a publisher, of this information.
Sorting and Filtering Reviews
By default, reviews are sorted by date and additional criteria to display the most relevant results. This includes factors like your language, reviews with text, and non-anonymous reviews. You can also sort reviews by other criteria, such as traveller type or score.
Translation Disclaimer
Our website may contain translations powered by Google. Google disclaims any warranties related to the translations, including any warranties of accuracy or reliability.
We hope this guide provides you with a clear understanding of how our review system works and how we ensure that reviews are reliable, relevant, and respectful. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our Customer Service team.
