Platforms
Expedia reviews for hotels: how the score works and how to reply
One review left on Hotels.com can appear under your Expedia listing. That is the single most useful thing to understand about this platform.
Keith Matthew Borg
Co-founder, Revify8 min read
Expedia scores properties out of 10, draws its reviews only from verified bookings, takes replies through Expedia Partner Central, and pools those reviews across a family of brands that includes Hotels.com. That last point is the one that changes how you should treat it: the review a guest left on one of those sites is not confined to it.
One review pool, several brands
Expedia Group operates a set of consumer brands that share booking and review infrastructure. For a property this has two practical effects.
- Your effective review volume is larger than it looks on any one site, because reviews collected through sister brands contribute to the same pool.
- One reply covers more ground than you think. Answering in Partner Central is answering for the group, not for a single consumer site.
It also means a property that has written Expedia off as low volume, based on what it sees on one brand’s listing, is usually underestimating it.
How the score works
| Platform | Scale | Built from | Reviews come from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expedia | Out of 10 | Ratings of specific aspects of the stay | Verified bookings only |
| Booking.com | Out of 10 | Category questions after checkout | Verified bookings only |
| TripAdvisor | Out of 5 (bubbles) | One overall rating, plus optional sub-ratings | Anyone claiming a visit |
| Out of 5 (stars) | One overall rating | Anyone with an account |
The shape matters more than the numbers. The two OTA scores are averages of aspect ratings from people who definitely stayed, which makes them slow to move and hard to game. The two public platforms are single overall ratings from anyone, which makes them faster to move in both directions and the reason the fake review problem lives there rather than here. There is more on the difference in which review platform actually matters.
Because it is an average of aspect ratings, a single weak aspect caps the headline the same way it does on Booking.com. The mechanics are close enough that the diagnosis in how the Booking.com review score works applies here almost unchanged, including the trap where a rate rise depresses the score while operations stay identical.
Where replies are written
Replies go through Expedia Partner Central, in the reviews section of the property account, and they are moderated before publication. That is the same pattern as Booking.com and the opposite of Google, where a reply is live immediately.
Two consequences follow. A reply written on Friday may not appear until the following week, so there is no point writing it as though it is a same-day response. And because moderation exists, a reply that argues with the guest is more likely to be rejected outright, which means the restrained version is not only better received but more likely to actually publish.
Use the same reply shape as everywhere else: neutral greeting, specific acknowledgement, what changed, close, and never the guest’s name. The reply template library has the wording.
Verified stays, and what that changes
Every review comes from a completed booking. Practically, that means:
- The fake review problem barely exists here. If a review is wrong, it is wrong about a stay that happened, which is a different conversation from the one you have on Google. Compare reporting a fake Google review.
- Removal requests almost never succeed unless the content breaches a guideline. Disputing the account is not a ground.
- The reviewer is traceable in your own records. You can usually find the booking, which makes a specific, informed reply possible in a way it often is not on a public platform.
Where Expedia belongs in your week
Honestly: after Google, and usually after whichever OTA sends you the most business. Not because it matters less to the guests who use it, but because the audience is narrower and already deep in a booking flow, while Google is read by everybody at every stage.
What that means in practice is a lower frequency rather than neglect. Google and any social comments want daily attention. The OTA inboxes, Expedia included, are a weekly job: read what came in, reply to everything negative and a reasonable share of the rest, and note anything that keeps recurring, because a complaint repeating across platforms is an operational fact rather than a review problem.
The one thing not to do is let it sit unattended for a season. An OTA listing with dozens of unanswered reviews reads, to the only people who see it, as a property that stopped paying attention, and they are looking at your price while they form that impression.
Common questions
How does the Expedia review score work?
Expedia uses a 10 point scale built from guest ratings of specific aspects of the stay, such as cleanliness, staff and service, amenities and condition of the property. It is an average across eligible reviews rather than a single overall star rating the guest chose.
Do Expedia and Hotels.com share reviews?
They are part of the same group and reviews are pooled across the family of brands, so a review collected through one site can appear on a property's listing on another. It means the effective review volume is larger than any single site suggests.
How do you reply to an Expedia review?
Through Expedia Partner Central, in the reviews section of the property's account. Responses are moderated before they appear, so a reply is not visible the moment it is submitted.
Can you remove a bad Expedia review?
Only where it breaches the platform's content guidelines, such as abusive language, personal information or content unrelated to the stay. Because reviews come from verified bookings, a genuine negative review from a real guest will not be removed on the basis that the property disagrees with it.