The scores are in – that is for hotel reviews. Russian travellers have emerged as the most generous in rating hotels and tend to give the highest scores, while travellers from the UAE are the most demanding.
These were the results of the recent Travel Smarts survey by leading accommodation site, Agoda.com, which shows the nationalities that give the best and worst hotel review scores on average. (see chart and infographic below)
The study, conducted in July 2015, analysed over seven million Agoda.com hotel reviews from travellers all over the world to see which nationalities tended to rate hotels higher or lower than average.
Agoda.com travellers can submit reviews for hotels after every stay by scoring hotels on a scale of 0 to 10 in six categories. The review score is an average of those numbers, with the global average at 8.52 out of 10.
Russian travellers are most generous with hotel reviews. (Image credit: Vepar5 iStock)
The survey reveals Russians to be the highest scorers who, as a group, give hotel scores .56 review points higher than the global average.
Egyptian, Irish and Polish travellers also give significantly higher scores, with Chinese travellers coming in at the eighth spot.
The toughest reviewers are travellers from the UAE, who give scores .32 review points lower than average. Japanese, Omani and Indian travellers also give scores much lower than the norm.
Travellers from Spain, Denmark, Canada, South Africa, Bahrain, Taiwan and South Korea submit reviews with scores closest to the global average. Their scores fall within .04 points of the norm.
“Travellers from different countries tend to have different review rating standards depending on their travel patterns, spending power, and just general likes and dislikes,” said John Brown, chief operating officer of Agoda.com.
“Our customers are from all over the world so our ratings will reflect the average. On our website and mobile app you can also read detailed reviews and even see which country each traveller is from,” he added.
• Featured image credit (hands holding numbers): GRAZVYDAS/ iStock
Average review divergence by nationality*
*of nationalities with enough reviews to make meaningful comparisons to the norm
