Reviews and ratings on Booking Engines

[uktrail]

I recently stayed in Clink Hostel, London. Hostelbookers invited me to send a review. I was very happy to do this.

On their form, I left one or two fields blank. As a result, they refused to accept my review and ratings.

It's a pity that I cannot send reviews because I have to put them in a certain way.

Tim: For the same reason, I would be very willing to send text reviews to the BUG site, but since you now require them in very specific formats I no longer do so.


I sent this email to Hostelbookers:

"I agree with the idea of writing reviews and ratings about the hostel, it is very helpful to future customers. But I don't like being expected to only mention good points, or being forced to answer questions I don't know or have no opinion about.

I put in a text review in which I noted both positve and negative aspects.

You refused my review because I had not answered all the questions. I am not prepared to answer questions dishonestly.

I think my ratings would have been helpful to future customers, and I am sorry you refused my review because I was not allowed to put 'no comment' against some questions. I will place my review of the hostel on other websites."

[Tim]

The whole point of different fields in the hostel rating is to make the rating as useful as possible for travellers.

In the past some travellers would give a hostel a top score because it is very clean but others would give it a low score because it had no atmosphere. Breaking the ratings into different categories gives the traveller a much better idea of what the hostel is like.

Hostelworld and Hostelbookers have large number of fields, some of which are pointless as they duplicate each other. However BUG only asks for three: atmosphere, cleanliness and maintenance, and facilities.

Cleanliness & maintenance
If it's a clean hostel in a brand new building it gets top a high score. If it is a dirty hostel an old run down house or converted hotel it will get a low score.

Atmosphere
A high score if you had a good time. A low score if it was boring and you didn't meet anyone.

Facilities
A hostel with lots of facilities like swimming pool, tennis courts, in-house cinema, big kitchen, etc. would get a high score; a hostel with minimal facilities (just a small kitchen with a TV) would get a very low score.

Choosing the different options makes the reviews much more useful for travellers and it's not too hard - you just choose the rating from three drop-down menus rather than one.

[uktrail]

No, Tim, the ratings are fine, although I would like to be able to omit an answer if I had no experience of the features or did not care. For facilities, I neither care nor look if it has a swimming pool. To me, the hostels with least facilities are often the best. But what I dislike in your form is HAVING to answer "What did you find WORST about this hostel"? I feel this is an inappropriate question unless there really is something BAD about it, which is rare. Since I don't feel able to write anything sensible, I am barred from submitting even the ratings, which would be useful. I feel I can express my view of a hostel most effectively in a descriptive review in which I always mention positive and negative points, if any.

In the HostelBookers questionaire, one question was "Did the description of the hostel on the HostelBookers site match up to what you found?" Well, I'm not looking at that description at this moment, am I? Do I remember it? I probably looked at descriptions of this and 6 other hostels on several sites before coming to a decision. Or in this case, I phoned 6 hostels and this was the first that had space, and I had already looked at the description on the hostel's own website. Do I want to pause while I search for that hostel on HostelBookers and analyse their description? No, I don't have that much time. Yet I am FORCED to choose YES or NO to that question! And if I dont, then I have to throw away my review, including the potentially helpful ratings.

Ask the questions by all means, but if they are REQUIRED fields, goodbye.

[Tim]

Well I can understand that asking if the description was accurate is a tough thing to answer, especially if you aren't looking at it. That really shouldn't be a required field.

As for BUG; I will check with the guy who wrote the review program and ask him about making the pros and cons optional fields. I don't think this should be a problem, but it may take a couple of months before it is working.

However I can't change the way that the ratings are broken down. If I did it would seriouly mess up the database and cause inaccurate ratings. Last time I did this - when I moved across from the old system - I lost thousands of reviews (that weren't compatible with the new database structure) and spent over 3500 hours working on the change. I'm not going back to the old system!

Besides the whole reason for these ratings is to break down the ratings so travellers can look for what they like in a hostel. If facilities aren't important - and for many travellers they aren't - then they don't look at this rating, but for those travellers where this is important they can compare this aspect of the hostel against other hostels.

It is good for travellers as it encourages travellers to book the hostel that best suits them.

[uktrail]

Tim, that really will be helpful, it will make me feel much more ready to send you some reviews!

I'm happy with the ratings, except that sometimes I will not have a comment either way, in which case I can choose Average without seriously affecting the statistics.

I suspect that HostelBookers make these required fields because the questionaire is, from their viewpoint, a marketing exercise. Another required question was: Did the hostel promote Hostelbookers within the hostel? Yes or No. I don't know and don't care, and certainly wasn't aware either way.

I also dislike the heading of their text review question: "What did you like about this hostel? " If everyone answers this literally, a lot more positive comments than negative will appear in their 'reviews', which is good for publicity but not for accuracy!

[Tim]

Originally Posted by uktrail

I also dislike the heading of their text review question: "What did you like about this hostel? " If everyone answers this literally, a lot more positive comments than negative will appear in their 'reviews', which is good for publicity but not for accuracy!

Well Hostelbookers (and Hostelworld) are booking sites first so they will present their reviews in a way that makes the hostels look good. After all that is what they are in business for. They don't want to upset a hostel and lose its business.

BUG and most other review sites (including your site) aren't booking sites, even though we handle bookings on an affiliate basis. By not dealing directly with hostels there is a degree of independence that a booking site doesn't offer. Furthermore we list all hostels whether they offer bookings or not so we don't try to be nice to hostels and it doesn't matter so much if a hostel can not be booked online.

I think if we did our own bookings directly we would lose the travellers' trust, and to be honest I don't think most hostels would want to work with us anyway since they know we will put the traveller ahead of them.

Of the main booking sites, I generally find Hostelbookers much better to work with and I make a LOT more bookings through them than with Hostelworld. However these petty questions must surely annoy travellers. Also Hostelworld don't ask for a review if the booking comes from an affiliate, but Hostelbookers do. That annoys me as I'd like the affiliate relationship to be more like a partnership than competing with our reviews.