Why two hotels with the same star rating feel completely different
A 4.3-star average tells you almost nothing about what it's actually like to stay somewhere. It doesn't tell you if guests are complaining about noise, or praising the breakfast, or if the front desk has gotten worse in the last six months. SENTEEZ reads what guests actually wrote, breaks it down by category, and keeps the picture current — so a rating means something you can act on, not just a number to glance at.
What a SENTEEZ score actually is
Most hotel ratings are a single blended average built up over a property's entire history — sometimes years of reviews, good and bad, folded into one number. That number doesn't tell you whether a hotel has improved, whether a problem is recent or long-resolved, or which parts of the stay are actually driving guest sentiment.
SENTEEZ works differently. Instead of averaging star ratings, we read the actual text of guest reviews and break the feedback down into specific categories — cleanliness, staff service, breakfast, value for money, location, maintenance, amenities, and food and beverage. Each category gets its own sentiment score, so you can see exactly what's working and what isn't, not just a single number that hides the detail.
How it works
Reviews come in from Google, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and other public sources, pulled in automatically for every property we cover.
Each review is read and scored by category, not just by star rating — so "the room was spotless but breakfast was disappointing" becomes two separate, specific signals instead of one blended number.
Recurring themes are tracked across all of a hotel's reviews, so an isolated one-off complaint is distinguished from a genuine pattern guests keep raising.
Scores are recalculated every quarter using the most recent 12 months of reviews, so a hotel's rating reflects how it's performing now — not how it performed years ago.
The numbers behind every score
We use a rolling 12-month window, refreshed every quarter, specifically so a hotel's score reflects recent guest experience — not reviews from three or four years ago that may no longer be accurate. A hotel that's fixed a recurring issue or improved its service sees that reflected in its score within months, not years.
What we measure
Every review is broken down across a range of categories that capture the specific parts of a stay guests actually talk about — including:
Cleanliness
room and property upkeep as guests actually experienced it
Staff service
front desk, housekeeping, and overall guest interactions
Breakfast
quality, variety, and consistency
Value for money
whether guests felt the price matched the experience
Location
access, surroundings, and convenience
Maintenance
how well the property is kept up over time
Amenities
facilities and extras guests mention
Food and beverage
dining beyond breakfast, where applicable
"A hotel can score strongly in one category and weakly in another — that detail is the entire point. A single star average can't show you this. A SENTEEZ score can."
SENTEEZ score vs. a star rating
| Dimension | Star rating (TripAdvisor, Google, etc.) | SENTEEZ score★ SENTEEZ Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Time window | ✕Often a hotel's entire history | ✓Rolling 12 months |
| What it shows | ✕One blended number | ✓Category-level breakdown |
| Update frequency | ✕Continuous, uncontextualized | ✓Refreshed quarterly, on a defined cycle |
| Recency | ✕Old and recent reviews weighted the same | ✓Recent guest experience prioritized |
| What you learn | ✕Whether guests were generally happy | ✓Why guests were or weren't happy, and where |
Frequently asked questions
See how this works for a specific hotel
Are you a hotel owner or GM?
This same category-level breakdown — plus competitor benchmarking and owner-ready reporting — is available for your property.