How to find out what guests complain about most
Every hotel remembers its angriest review. What costs bookings is the complaint that comes back quietly in review after review, sometimes in reviews that still give a good score. To find it, gather the past year's reviews from every site, sort each complaint into a few plain groups, count them, and set them beside what guests say about the hotels near you. The group at the top of the count is the one to fix first.
Also called: review analysis, sentiment analysis, guest feedback analysis, online reputation management.
A OneHorizyn guide. Updated .
Gather every review in one place
- Google, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, MakeMyTrip, Agoda and any other site that sells or reviews you.
- The past twelve months, so that a season's problem isn't missed and an old one isn't counted.
- Your own sources too: the complaints book at the front desk, the survey you send after checkout, and guests' emails.
- Every rating, not only the low ones: a good review that says the room was noisy still counts.
Since January 2025 Booking.com weights each property's overall score by how recent each review is, so there the newest complaints weigh most.
Sort each complaint into a few plain groups
Use a short list of groups, and keep it the same each time you count:
- Cleanliness: rooms, bathrooms, linen.
- The room: beds, upkeep, things broken or worn.
- Noise and sleep.
- Staff and service.
- Check-in and check-out.
- Food and drink.
- Wifi.
- Value for money, rules and extra charges.
- Getting there and parking.
One review can raise two complaints: count both. Copy the guest's own words beside each, so that whoever fixes it reads what the guest saw.
Count, don't remember
- 1In a sheet, give each group a column and each review a row.
- 2Mark every group a review complains about.
- 3Count each group's marks, and divide by the number of reviews, so that a busy month doesn't look like a bad one.
- 4Do the same for the low ratings alone: what the angriest guests complain about may differ from the rest.
- 5Note the date of each complaint. One that stopped months ago may already be fixed.
Of 120 reviews from the past year, 18 complained about noise from the road, 11 about a slow check-in, 9 about the wifi and 4 about breakfast. Noise is the one to fix first, and the 18 reviews say which rooms it comes from.
Count what guests praise too
Use the same groups for what guests praise. It tells you what to keep while you fix the rest, and what to say about yourself on your website and in your replies. A group some guests praise and others criticise, such as breakfast, is worth reading closely: the difference may be one shift or one day of the week.
Set it beside the hotels near you
Do the same count for two or three hotels guests compare you with. A complaint every hotel on the street hears, such as traffic noise, tells guests about the street. One that only you hear, such as a slow check-in, is yours to fix. What their guests praise and yours never mention is worth a look as well.
Fix the top one, then say so
- 1Take the group at the top of the count, and name one person to fix it by a date.
- 2When it is fixed, say so in your replies to the next reviews that raise it.
- 3Count again three months later, with the same groups, and see whether it has fallen.
The stars by which hotels' ratings rose after they began replying to their reviews, with 12% more reviews, in a study of hotel reviews by Proserpio and Zervas published in Marketing Science in 2017.
