The Average Hotel Does Not Get The Average Rating

The millions of travelers who review hotels, restaurants, and other attractions on TripAdvisor also supply a numeric rating by clicking one of five circles ranging from 1 for “terrible” to 5 for “excellent.” On the whole, travelers are pretty kind.The average review rating for hotels and other lodgings is over 3.9. The median score is 4 and since that middle review is lost somewhere in a huge pile of 4-ratings, well over half of hotel reviews give a 4 or 5 rating.

The millions of travelers who review hotels, restaurants, and other attractions on TripAdvisor also supply a numeric rating by clicking one of five circles ranging from 1 for “terrible” to 5 for “excellent.” On the whole, travelers are pretty kind.The average review rating for hotels and other lodgings is over 3.9. The median score is 4 and since that middle review is lost somewhere in a huge pile of 4-ratings, well over half of hotel reviews give a 4 or 5 rating.

So with such kind reviewers, most hotels must have a rating over 4 and hoteliers must all love us, right? Actually, no. The average of all hotel ratings is 3.6. Here’s why: some large, frequently-reviewed hotels have thousands of reviews. It is hardly surprising that the Bellagio in Las Vegas has about 250 times more reviews than say, the Cambridge Gateway Inn, an unloved motel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It may or may not be surprising that these oft-reviewed properties tend to be well-liked by our reviewers. Surprising or not, it’s true: the hotels with the most reviews have a higher average rating than the long tail of hotels, motels, B&Bs, and Inns with only a handful of reviews each.

The chart compares the distribution of user review scores with the distribution of hotel average scores.

For the curious, here are the top 10 hotels on TripAdvisor by number of reviews: