Booking.com is committed to providing you with the most reliable and relevant information to help you plan your next trip. Our reviews are a key part of this, and we want to ensure they’re as accurate and trustworthy as possible.
We use a simple but effective system to calculate the overall review score for each property. We add up all the review scores we’ve received and divide that total by the number of reviews. It’s like finding the average grade in a class!
To make sure recent feedback has more weight, we’re currently testing a weighted review system in several locations, including Malta, Iceland, Australia, Greece, Brazil, and North Carolina. This means that newer reviews have a greater impact on the overall score.
Additionally, guests can provide valuable insights by giving separate “subscores” for specific aspects of their stay, like location, cleanliness, staff, comfort, facilities, value for money, and free Wi-Fi. This gives potential guests a more detailed picture of what to expect.
Keeping Reviews Honest and Helpful
We work hard to ensure that the reviews on Booking.com are genuine and trustworthy. We have teams of people and automated systems dedicated to identifying and removing fake reviews. If we detect a fraudulent review, we will delete it and take action against the person responsible.
We encourage you to report anything suspicious you see to our Customer Service team. They will forward it to our Fraud team for investigation.
We want to publish every review, positive or negative, but there are some exceptions. We will not display reviews that:
- Impersonate others (e.g., claiming to be someone they’re not).
- Violate our review guidelines.
These guidelines help us maintain a high-quality, family-friendly environment while still allowing for the expression of honest opinions.
Making Reviews Easy to Find and Use
We take steps to ensure that reviews are relevant and timely. We may only accept reviews submitted within 3 months of a guest’s stay and may stop showing reviews after 36 months or if the property changes ownership.
We also want to make sure you find the reviews that matter most to you. When you see multiple reviews, the most recent ones will be at the top. You can also sort and filter them by time of year, review score, and other criteria.
In addition, we may show external reviews from other reputable travel websites. We will always clearly indicate when we’re doing this.
Review Guidelines
We ask that all contributions are:
- Travel-related. The most helpful reviews are detailed and give other travelers valuable information to make better decisions.
- Appropriate for a global audience. Please avoid using profanity, discriminatory language, threats, or other inappropriate content.
- Genuine and unique. Reviews are most valuable when they are original and unbiased.
Booking.com property partners should not post on behalf of guests or offer incentives for reviews. We will not tolerate attempts to lower a competitor’s rating by submitting negative reviews.
We respect the privacy of others and will make an effort to obscure personal information, including email addresses, phone numbers, website addresses, social media accounts, and similar details.
The opinions expressed in reviews are those of Booking.com customers and properties, and not of Booking.com. Booking.com is not responsible for the content of reviews or responses.
We hope these guidelines help you understand how we ensure that Booking.com reviews are a valuable resource for travelers around the world!
