15 tips to help you interpret hotel reviews to choose the best hotel for you


It takes knowing what you need from your hotel and attention to the details of hotel reviews to successfully interpret them and find the best hotel for your stay.


Interpreting hotel reviewsLast week, I wrote about my tips to sort fake travel reviews from honest ones. It’s not always easy to find the more discreet fakes and I’ll bet that I miss some, from time to time, but after a while everyone can discover most of the scam reviews.

For me, being able to set aside the scam reviews is important, as I often use reviews to help me choose all sorts of travel purchases, particularly hotels.

Following up on last week’s column, this week I have 15 tips to help you use reviews strategically to help you make your hotel choices.

Star ratings themselves aren’t helpful, but sorting reviews by star level to find more detail helps a lot, as does ensuring you don’t forget to use the worst reviews.

Skip the star ratings except to ensure you examine all levels of reviews:
The star ratings are good for one thing. By using them to sort, you can easily find ratings that both extol and pan the hotels you’re considering. You can’t do a deep enough dive into the suitability of a hotel without checking multiple rating levels of reviews. The problem is that the star ratings on their own don’t give you insight into what really might matter to you as a guest.

Don’t forget to look at the lower/lowest rated reviews for any hotel being considered:
The lower rating reviews can indicate legitimate complaints, particularly if there’s a frequency of specific complaints among a number of reviews. That said, look for details in the complaints. If they don’t have complaint details, ignore them.

See how hotel management responds to bad reviews:
How hotel management replies and responds to a bad review can be highly revealing. It can tell you if the review is an honest one and can lay bare how serious management is to both address the complaint and be top quality management.

Hotel guests need to know the features they need from a hotel in advance to be able to successfully choose the best hotel for them.

Know in advance the features you want:
Before you start to read reviews, you need to know what you want in features from the hotel. Only then can searching the reviews reveal relevant information and potential “deal breakers” among reviews. For example, if you need the Internet to stay in touch with your office, that needs to be in your list of essential features.

Keyword searches of reviews are “key:“
Improve your review productivity by doing keyword searches of the reviews of any hotel in which you’re interested. Start with a look for bedbug reports in the reviews. Also look for reports of “noise”, “location” near things to do, “thermostat” and “temperature” (I want to know if can I control the temperature in my room or if the hotel controls it centrally), wattage or the word “dim” (I want to know if the lighting in the room is adequate.), “Internet” and “construction.” I always search for construction because it means early morning noise. Finally, I always search for the word “outlet” because I want to know if there are sufficient and well placed outlets to charge and use my electronic devices.

Look for review dates, real photos, and specific details about hotels to help you make your choice.

Note the date of each review:
Some problems can be date-sensitive. For example, reviews that mention construction, and therefore scream noise, are typically time-sensitive. Eventually, the problem will go away. If people are saying that the rooms look dated and tired but were written a while back and recent reviews don’t make the same complaint, it’s likely that the hotel had some renovations. Check with the hotel to find out for sure.

Look for real photos, not stock photos:
Real photos provide detail that’s critical in a review. If the photos used are clearly stock photos, ignore the review.

Keep an eye for specific details about hotels:
There may be specific room numbers, floors, or the side of a hotel with a specific problem such as noise from an elevator or snack and ice area. A room above or adjacent to the trash dumpster loading dock, so the room gets the noise from the 6 am trash dumpster collection, can be an awful problem.

Look for reviews from people that are more likely to be like you:
If you can, look for reviews by people who are likely similar to you with regard to taste, needs and temperament. Look for reviewers who come from the same country or region. If you’re a business person, look for that. If you’re traveling with family, look for that in the reviewer’s description.

Nothing is more important in hotel reviews than the details the reviews supply when explaining them.

Details, details, details:
A major theme that I keep repeating in this column is to look for reviews that have details, as not only are they likely the real ones, but also because they are typically the most revealing.

Check the reviews for hidden fees:
If you’ve not been searching for it before in reviews, add hidden fees to your list unless you don’t mind costly surprises when you get the bill at the end of your stay.

Look at the number of reviews:
The more reviews there are to search through, the better your ability to find out what you need to know about the hotels you’re considering and the more likely you’ll get a true picture of the hotels.

Balanced reviews, reviews from return guests and multiple reviews revealing patterns and trends are extremely helpful to those choosing where to stay.

Balanced reviews are better:
These reviews, ones that aren’t all bad or all great, are likely more reliable and contain more details that you can really use.

Look for reviews from return guests:
I definitely look for reviews from people who are back to the same hotel more than once. They will have an idea of trends or specific problems that might be important to you, plus it often means the hotel is a good one generally.

Look for patterns and trends:
Be careful about believing the “one-off” reviews that buck the trend set by the other reviews. Put more faith in multiple reviews that say the same basic thing.

While these 15 commonsense tips to successfully interpret hotel reviews aren’t foolproof, they’ve worked well for me for many years. If you have some great additional tips, please write to me and let me know what they are for a future column. I hope your next hotel stay is wonderful.


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