The weight of a review: Assessing Booking.com’s new scoring system
This study examines Booking.com’s January 2025 update to its review scoring system, which shifts from an arithmetic mean of all guest reviews over the past 3 years to a weighted algorithm. The new system prioritizes recent reviews while reducing the impact of older ones. Using a sample of 100 Spanis...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:recercat____::dc18ac9b27c19562ae00f65616fc6d29 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doi.org/10.1177/14673584251384011 https://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/469937 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Booking.com Online reviews Hotel ratings Algorithm transparency |
| Sumario: | This study examines Booking.com’s January 2025 update to its review scoring system, which shifts from an arithmetic mean of all guest reviews over the past 3 years to a weighted algorithm. The new system prioritizes recent reviews while reducing the impact of older ones. Using a sample of 100 Spanish hotels and 74,882 reviews, we identify the weighting scheme: 85% for reviews from the last 12-month period, 10% for previous year, and 5% for the year before that. Our findings indicate a minimal overall impact on hotel ratings, with most properties undergoing a variation of less than 0.1 points out of 10. While the updated system provides a more dynamic reflection of current service quality, it also introduces risks, such as increased vulnerability to fraudulent reviews and short-term fluctuations. This change poses challenges for academic studies on hotel reputation and highlights the need for greater transparency in algorithmic scoring systems. |
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