Booking.com is dedicated to providing the best reviews to help you make the right choice for your next trip. But with so many reviews out there, how do we make sure they’re all reliable and helpful?
Calculating Review Scores
We calculate our overall review score by averaging all the reviews we receive. But in some countries like Malta, Iceland, Australia, Greece, Brazil, and North Carolina, we’re trying something new. We’re using a weighted system where more recent reviews have a bigger impact on the final score. This is because people’s experiences can change over time, and newer reviews are more likely to reflect the current state of an accommodation.
On top of the overall score, guests can also give separate scores for things like location, cleanliness, staff, comfort, facilities, value for money, and free Wi-Fi. We want to give you a complete picture of what it’s like to stay at an accommodation.
Ensuring Review Quality
We take the quality of our reviews very seriously. That’s why we have teams and automated systems that work hard to detect and remove fake reviews. If we catch someone trying to cheat the system, we take action.
You can also help us keep things fair by reporting any suspicious reviews to our Customer Service team.
What We Don’t Allow
We believe in transparency, and we want to publish every review we receive, both good and bad. However, we have to draw the line at reviews that include:
- Impersonation: Reviews claiming to be someone they’re not.
- Violations of our guidelines: Reviews that break our rules.
Keeping Reviews Relevant and Up-to-Date
To make sure our reviews are relevant and helpful, we might only accept reviews submitted within 3 months of checking out. We also stop displaying reviews after 36 months, or if the accommodation changes ownership. This ensures that reviews are still relevant to current travellers.
Review Organization and Display
When you see multiple reviews, the most recent ones will be at the top. We also consider the language of the review and whether it includes text or just a rating. You can also sort and filter reviews by time of year, review score, and other criteria.
External Review Scores
Sometimes, we show external review scores from other travel websites. We make it clear when we’ve done this so you know where the information is coming from.
Our Guidelines
All our review guidelines are designed to keep the content on Booking.com relevant, family-friendly, and respectful, while still allowing people to express their honest opinions. This means:
- Keep it travel-related: We want reviews to help other travellers make informed decisions. Please don’t include personal opinions or discussions about politics, religion, or ethics.
- Be appropriate for a global audience: We encourage you to be respectful and avoid using profanity, discriminatory language, threats, or inappropriate content.
- Be genuine: Reviews should be honest and original, based on your personal experience.
- Respect privacy: We will do our best to protect the privacy of our guests and accommodation partners by obscuring personal information.
Responsibility
The opinions expressed in reviews are those of our customers and accommodations, not Booking.com. We are not responsible for the content of any review.
Transparency
We strive to be transparent with you about our review process. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Customer Service team.
