Why High Ratings Aren't Enough for Hotel Reviews — Lessons From a Trip Gone Wrong

When choosing where to stay, we tend to lean on the reviews and star ratings on Google Maps and booking sites — I think most people do. I did too. And that complacency once nearly ruined an important trip.

This article starts with that failure. I'm writing it in the hope that even one person can be spared the same experience.

I trusted the high ratings and let my guard down

It happened on an important trip, as I stayed at a series of inns.

Because my companion had a respiratory condition, I had told the inn in advance, “Please be as careful as possible about cleanliness.” And just to be safe, I thought I had checked the reviews of the place properly.

That inn had high ratings in the vast majority of its reviews. The star count was impeccable. There were a few low-rated posts, but every one of them had a reply from the owner saying, “We're very sorry, we will make improvements.” Seeing that, I felt reassured: “This is a place that responds properly.”

And yet — the room I was actually shown into was, to put it kindly, far from clean. The consideration I had asked for in advance hadn't gotten through, either. For a companion with a health condition, that was a problem we couldn't overlook.

We managed to find another inn that day, but the time that was supposed to be a happy memory was greatly diminished.

What I realized later: I'd been reading them wrong

After I'd calmed down, I took another careful look at that inn's reviews, and something struck me.

The owner's replies that I had taken as “reassurance” were, in fact, the same wording repeated over and over. Every time a low rating came in: “We're very sorry, we will make improvements.” — yet a while later, someone else would write about the very same complaint. In other words, the words “we will improve” were not proof that anything had been improved. The same problem had been repeating the whole time.

When I realized that, I understood that my way of reading reviews had been wrong. I had looked only at the surface — “lots of high ratings,” “they even reply to the low ratings” — and hadn't read what was actually inside them.

What you should really look at in hotel reviews

Here are a few ways of reading hotel reviews that I learned from this experience.

Read the low ratings carefully. No matter how many high ratings line up, the low ratings often contain “what someone about to stay there really wants to know.” Rather than feeling reassured by a high star count, it matters to read through what the low ratings actually say.

Look at the “substance” of owner replies. The mere fact that there are replies can look like a sign of sincerity, but check whether the same apology and the same “we will improve” are being repeated. Sometimes it's only words, and nothing has actually changed.

Search for reviews relevant to your own situation. Cleanliness, quietness, facilities, access — if you have conditions you can't compromise on, focusing on reviews that touch on those points gives you something to base your decision on.

Trust concrete descriptions. Rather than “it was the best,” reviews that state concrete facts — “the towels were old,” “the front desk took 20 minutes” — reflect reality more closely.

The way of reading I've described here isn't limited to hotels. In a form that applies to places in general, it's also laid out as 7 signs for spotting unnatural high ratings.

A service I built for someone important

After that trip, I kept thinking: if there had been a service that stood on the consumer's side and looked at the real truth of the reviews, maybe that failure could have been avoided.

That is how I came to build WasaView. An AI reads through a facility's Google Maps reviews and organizes them for you — unnaturally high ratings, points worth noting that are buried in the low ratings, and even the very thing I couldn't spot myself: whether the owner's replies keep repeating the same promise to improve.

For when you want to check what lies behind the reviews — something the star count and an owner's one line of “we will improve” won't reveal. Before a stay you can't afford to get wrong, you can use it as material for your decision.

I don't want anyone's time with the people they care about to be ruined by something overlooked in the reviews. My hope is that this service can protect a day like that for someone.

Before a stay you can't afford to get wrong. Why not read the reviews one step deeper with WasaView? 👉 Try WasaView