In the Good Old Days (there’s probably a trademark for that in the travel industry), hotel star ratings were normally worked out in a variety of ways.
Some national or regional authorities had their own inspectors visit each property to evaluate the service, cleanliness, grandeur of a place, etc.
Elsewhere, industry bodies might be charged with hiring professional reviewers to take a wider view of a town and city and work out which might be considered top-drawer in terms of facilities and style (five star) or a grubby and cramped bed and breakfast (one star).
Either way, consumers apparently knew what they getting when looking for a property – the system supposedly worked.
Then came the interweb and user reviews appeared and started skewing the so-called official star rating, often throwing up very different results from what the pros thought compared to what the great unwashed considered to be good, bad or average.
But such is the confusion and controversy over star ratings that it is obviously ripe for satire. Even some very gentle mocking speaks volumes as to what consumers think when they see online star ratings for hotels.
Anyway, it made us laugh:
NB: Thanks to XKCD for the image.
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About Kevin May
Great cartoon and fun!
In my perception guest reviews indeed show a tendancy to polarize: Either “excellent” or “awful”, and not much in between.
@markus – as someone pointed out on Twitter earlier today…
His favourite review he’d seen on TripAdvisor:
“husband ill all week and raw sewerage flowing outside hotel… 4/5″
It seems that a lot of travellers want to be seen as generous awarding absurdly high scores to what would otherwise be an ordinary hotel. This results in ratings skewed towards the top end of the scale, which makes it difficult for someone to choose between 10 hotels each with a 4 1/2 star rating even if these are very different places that should be spread more evening across a five-star scale. And it’s not just five star ratings, ratings on a scale of 1–10 or 1–100 are equally skewed towards the top end of the scale with hostel booking sites having the majority of their properties rated above 80% when a more even distribution with an average around 50% would be more appropriate and more helpful to the traveller.
The ideal solution is something like what we do at BUG where both an independently assessed editor’s rating (based on a visit to the property where a professional assesses a rating based on an objective set of criteria) is presented alongside user reviews and ratings. This way the traveller can use a professional’s assessment to short list a set of properties and then look at user reviews to find what suits them the most. Ideally, the professional assessment will also be a guide to users submitting their own reviews and ratings, saying that it is OK to be honest and give a place a two or three star review.
Related to Tim’s suggestion above, perhaps TA, Amazon and other review-heavy sites should – at this stage of user adoption & familiarity – enable consumers to filter/pivot a venue’s/book’s/CD’s reviews by helpfulness or the “expert” rating of the reviewer etc. Presently, every “star” is weighted democratically. Perhaps that’s ideologically ideal. But to cut through the smog, we should be able to get to the credible reviews easily.
Im interested to see who the client actually trusts with ratings though – do they trust the so called ‘expert’ or do they value the opinion of fellow travelers more? Does anyone have any stats on this?
Isnt the beauty of an online rating that it’s (hopefully) unbiased and its current. Someone with a clipboard who visits a property once a year (if that) awards the approriate rating against his scorecard. But the following day the GM and Head Chef leave – the star rating remains in place until the next inspection.
Also the online rating is based on what the clients perception of value is and isnt that what actually counts? it also gives the smaller guest houses who maybe have an excellent product and opportunity to score highly whereas maybe on an ‘expert’ grading they wouldnt fare so well as they dont have ‘scoring’ facilities such as air-con, tv, silver service etc?
Interested to hear anyones thoughts on what direction it should be going in – any hoteliers??
And the cartoon does just about sum it up for those in the business though!!
Thanks
According to the experiences and knowledge of the German Hotel Association the guests take the best from each of the two information options: stars from official hotel classification AND recommendations from guest reviews.
In 2008 TNS Infratest had asked representatively on our behalf hotel guests in Germany which sources of information they take into account when looking for a hotel. The results:
65% – Personal recommendations
41% – Stars from official hotel classification
30% – Brand name of hotel
28% – Guest reviews on the web
11% – Hotel certificates
Agreed that preparing in advance for an expert’s arrival is undesired – reminds me of that Fawlty Towers episode. I’m thinking less of hotel inspectors than frequent travelers whose judging benchmarks can be ascertained by their overall set of ratings (what a 4-star means to this reviewer vs. a 5). Readers do have to weigh the up/downsides of attributes important to frequent travelers vs. those of less jaded guests. Ultimately, what I’m saying is readers should have the choice of filtering/pivoting the reviews to see the ones they want – knowing the benefits/pitfalls of their selection criteria.
After running our small hotel for just over a year I can say:
- the people who have a great time and tell you they will write a great review when they go home almost never follow through
- the few people who you wished never stayed at your place and had some kind of problem and while they may have threatened you with a bad review, also have mostly never followed through
- the people who write reviews typically are solo or couple travelers that are generally polite and if they have some of problem usually don’t mention it.
- as much as how heart breaking it is to get a bad review, it (so far) hasn’t dampened our business.
- at least one person mentioned that they liked our management response which made them want to stay at our place