HW's rating system can have a huge effect on the success or failure of a hostel. What do you think of Hostelworld's review system? Are there any suggestions hostels could offer to WRI to help improve it?
One idea that I think would make the review system better would be to change the duration of how long the reviews last.
These are some of the problems:
- Hostels change in quality quickly. Reviews from 6 months ago are often not relevant.
- Some remote or smaller hostels can't get enough reviews in a 6-month period to get top-ranked.
Possible solutions:
- For hostels that get a lot of reviews, only calculate the last 50 reviews. If 50 isn't enough, maybe 70.
- Change the expiry date on reviews for hostels outside of major cities that don't get a high number of reviews so that reviews from last season don't expire until there is a 50 review average.
Idea first seen here:
Hostelbooker’s review system is a lot more up to date. Their system relies on the average score of the last 25 reviews. Hostelworld’s review system is the based on that of the last six month. A hostel can change a lot over six months; staff, management and ownership can change, a hostel my start to need refurbishment and indeed be refurbished. They may have outdoor facilities that are only available part of the year.
All these make a great difference and to a hostel. If they has been great for four months and a new owner comes if and takes all the freebies away, reduces the hours the cleaning staff work then I hostel with a fairly high rating may in reality be a real hole. Of course the reverse is applicable and somewhere with poor ratings could have become a great place to stay but you wouldn’t book as they had a low rating.
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