Expedia Hotel Ratings Explained: Guest Score vs. Star Rating

What do Expedia hotel ratings actually measure?

When hotel managers search for Expedia hotel ratings, they are usually after one of two different things without realising they are separate. Expedia publishes a guest rating (traveler feedback on a 1-10 scale) and, independently, a star rating (a property classification based on amenities and facilities). Confusing the two is common, and it matters because you improve them in completely different ways.

This guide breaks down how each one works, what actually moves the numbers, and what a hotel manager can do about it this month.

How does the Expedia guest rating work?

The guest rating on a listing is a simple average of the final scores from every individual eligible review. Guests rate the overall stay and can also comment on specific aspects like cleanliness, service, amenities, and location, and those category comments shape the impression travelers form even though the headline number is the average.

Only verified guests who booked and completed a stay through Expedia are invited to review, which is why these are described as verified guest reviews. That matters for trust: a competitor cannot tank your score with a review for a stay that never happened. If a guest submits more than one review for the same stay, only their most recent submission counts, so an updated review after a resolved complaint genuinely replaces the earlier one.

Because the score is an average of however many reviews you have, the fastest lever most small teams control is simply getting more reviews from happy guests, at the right moment. A guest who gets a quick, helpful answer to a pre-arrival question or an in-stay issue is more likely to leave a review at all, and more likely to leave a good one. Timo's AI receptionist handles that guest messaging across WhatsApp, phone, and email, and prompts satisfied guests to review when they are happiest, which is the kind of consistent follow-through that moves a guest score over time.

Why did Expedia's ratings suddenly look different?

If your scores seem to have shifted with no change in guest experience, the scale changed under you. Expedia's shift to a 1-10 review scale in December 2023 aligned it with Booking.com, which already used the same 1-10 system. The wider scale spreads scores out more than the old 5-point one did, so a property that clustered near the top of the old scale can show a lower-looking number today even though guest satisfaction has not actually declined.

This is worth explaining to your team, and to an ownership group, if the number dropped after the changeover: it is a scale effect, not necessarily a service problem. The mechanics of how eligible reviews are gathered and averaged are set out in Expedia's guest reviews documentation.

What is the Expedia star rating, and how is it different?

The star rating is not guest feedback at all. It is a property classification based on amenities and facilities: things like on-site dining, pools, room service, and other physical or service features a property offers. It is the kind of rating you would expect on a printed brochure, not something a guest fills in after checkout.

Who assigns it depends on where you operate. In France, Italy, Turkey, the UAE, and Israel, a local star-rating authority sets the classification. In other regions where no official authority exists, Expedia Group assigns it directly, per Expedia's star ratings documentation.

Practically, this means you cannot earn a higher star rating with great service the way you earn a higher guest score. You raise it by adding or documenting the facilities the classification counts, and in regulated markets by working with the local authority on your official rating. Do not spend energy trying to move your star class with guest-experience fixes, and do not assume a strong guest score will change your star class. They are unrelated levers.

What should a hotel manager do to raise the guest rating?

Start with the categories Expedia already asks guests about: cleanliness, service, amenities, and location. Location you cannot change, but you can make sure your listing sets accurate expectations about it, since a mismatch between expectation and reality is a common source of low scores that have nothing to do with the room itself.

A few concrete moves:

1. Respond to every review through Expedia Partner Central, the portal hotels use to manage reviews and listings. A specific, non-defensive reply to a negative review often does more for future bookers than the review itself does damage.
2. Fix repeat complaints first. If three guests in a month mention slow check-in, that is a process problem worth solving before anything else.
3. Make it easy for happy guests to leave a review. Since only verified, completed stays are eligible, the biggest lever is often simply making sure satisfied guests get asked at the right time, not whether they had a good stay.
4. Compare against your Booking.com score. Because Booking.com runs on the same 1-10 scale, a gap between your Expedia and Booking.com averages usually points to a channel-specific issue, like a mismatch between what each listing promises. Our guide to Booking.com's 1-10 review scoring covers that system in detail, and our broader piece on how to increase your hotel rating covers tactics that apply across every OTA.

Does responding to reviews change the score?

Responding to reviews does not change the numeric average directly, but it changes what future guests expect and how existing guests behave. A property that visibly replies to complaints tends to see fewer repeat versions of the same complaint, because management demonstrably fixed the issue. For a full walkthrough on tone and timing, see our guide on how to respond to hotel reviews.

The upstream fix is communication during the stay, not after it. Most low scores trace back to something a guest raised in the moment (a late check-in, a maintenance issue, a billing question) that either got answered quickly or did not get answered at all. A property that replies within minutes, on whatever channel the guest already used, resolves more of these before they become a one-star review.

Where Expedia ratings fit in your OTA strategy

Expedia is one channel among several, and treating its guest rating in isolation misses the bigger picture. Compare it against your other platforms, keep an eye on how your star classification appears across listings, and build a simple, repeatable process for requesting reviews after every stay rather than sporadically. Our OTA cheat sheet lays out how the major platforms differ so you are not managing each one from scratch.

Getting more reviews in the first place is often the real bottleneck, more than the rating itself. If most satisfied guests never get asked, no amount of review-response polish will move the average. Our guide on how to encourage guest reviews covers how to build that habit without pestering guests who would rather move on.

A strong Expedia guest score ultimately comes down to consistency: guests who get fast, accurate answers before and during their stay, and a nudge to review when they are happiest. Keeping that communication running around the clock is exactly what an AI receptionist is built for, and it is what turns good stays into the reviews that raise your score.