How To Read Accommodation Reviews Properly

Ignore the five stars and the one stars. The truth is in the three and four star reviews.

5 min read · Updated March 2026

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Properties change management, renovate, and decline. A review from three years ago describes a different hotel. Read the last six months and disregard the lifetime average.

Traveller reading accommodation reviews on a laptop

The middle reviews tell the truth

Five star reviews are often written in the glow of a good holiday. One star reviews are usually about one specific incident. Three and four star reviews are where people describe what the place is actually like, including what they were willing to tolerate.

Search for the words that matter

Use the review search for noise, air conditioning, hot water, lift, wifi, stairs, and clean. Those six terms surface the recurring structural problems that photographs never show.

Hotel room interior showing the details reviewers tend to describe

Watch for the pattern, not the complaint

One person complaining about street noise is a light sleeper. Six people mentioning it across four months is a property on a loud street. The pattern is the signal.

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