We want you to have the best experience possible when booking your next adventure, and that includes trusting the reviews you see! To ensure that our review system is fair and reliable, we employ a straightforward approach to calculating overall scores and displaying them.
Understanding Review Scores
Each review on our platform is assigned a score between 1 and 10. To arrive at the overall score for an accommodation, we simply add up all the review scores received and divide that total by the number of reviews.
We’re always looking for ways to improve our system, and we are currently testing a weighted review system in several locations, including Malta, Iceland, Australia, Greece, Brazil, and North Carolina. In these areas, we give more weight to recent reviews, reflecting the most up-to-date experiences of travelers.
Additionally, guests can provide individual scores 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 these ‘subscores’ are provided independently of the overall score, so there’s no direct connection between them.
Writing and Editing Reviews
You can submit a review for an accommodation you booked through our platform, even if you only arrived but didn’t stay. To edit a review you’ve already submitted, please contact our Customer Service team.
Combating Fake Reviews
We understand that authentic reviews are crucial for travelers, so we take the issue of fake reviews very seriously. We have a dedicated team of individuals and automated systems constantly working to detect and remove any fake reviews. If we identify a fake review, we delete it and may take further action against those responsible.
You can also help us fight fake reviews by reporting any suspicious activity to our Customer Service team. Our Fraud team will investigate the matter thoroughly.
Review Guidelines: Ensuring Quality and Respect
We strive to make sure that all reviews published on our platform are relevant and family-friendly. We won’t display any review that contains or refers to the following:
- Impersonation: We won’t tolerate reviews written by someone pretending to be another individual.
- Violation of our review guidelines: We have clear guidelines in place to ensure the quality and fairness of reviews.
To ensure relevance, we may only accept reviews submitted within 3 months of checking out. Additionally, reviews older than 36 months or those submitted after a change of ownership may no longer be displayed.
Accommodation providers are welcome to respond to reviews.
Sorting and Filtering Reviews
To help you easily find the most relevant reviews, we prioritize the most recent ones. Additional factors may also influence the order, such as the language of the review, whether it includes comments or just a rating, and if it’s anonymous.
You can further customize your search by sorting and filtering reviews by time of year, review score, or other criteria.
External Reviews: Transparency is Key
In some cases, we may display review scores from other reputable travel websites. We will always clearly indicate when we’ve included external reviews.
Guiding Principles for Review Content
These guidelines aim to provide a safe, informative, and family-friendly environment while still allowing for the expression of honest opinions. They apply to all types of reviews, regardless of sentiment.
Contributions should be travel-related and helpful to others. They should be detailed and insightful, enabling travelers to make informed decisions. Please refrain from including personal, political, ethical, or religious commentary. Promotional content will be removed, and any issues related to Booking.com’s services should be addressed directly with our Customer Service or Accommodation Service teams.
Contributions should be appropriate for a global audience. We kindly request that you avoid using profanity or creative spelling to circumvent profanity filters. Hate speech, discriminatory remarks, threats, sexually explicit content, violence, and the promotion of illegal activities are strictly prohibited.
All content should be genuine and unique to the guest. Reviews hold the most value 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 manipulate review scores by submitting negative reviews about competitors.
Respect the privacy of others. We will make every effort to obscure personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers, website addresses, social media accounts, and similar details.
It’s important to remember that the opinions expressed in reviews belong to Booking.com customers and properties, not Booking.com. We do not assume responsibility for the content of reviews or responses. We act as a distributor, not a publisher, of these comments.
By default, reviews are sorted by date and other criteria to display the most relevant ones. These may include your preferred language, reviews with text, and non-anonymous reviews. Additional sorting options are also available, such as filtering by traveler type or score.
This service may use translations powered by Google. Google disclaims all warranties related to the translations, including any warranties of accuracy, reliability, and implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
We hope these guidelines provide you with a clear understanding of our approach to reviews and how we strive to ensure the accuracy, fairness, and usefulness of the information you find on our platform. Your feedback is valuable, and we encourage you to share any comments or suggestions you may have.
