We read 2,128 hotel reviews: what guests praise and what they complain about

69 percent of 2,128 reviews give full marks; but 41 percent also wrote a negative. We counted the review pool on our hotel pages from start to finish: six destinations, 152 hotels, two sources. The most praised thing is staff and service; the category that lags is cleanliness. This article gives the numbers and what they mean when you book. Data as of 1 September 2026.

Where the data comes from

The reviews were pulled once from our booking provider’s data endpoint and are published on the hotel reviews pages; the site makes no external call at runtime. The pool is built like this: 152 hotels, at most fourteen reviews per hotel, 2,128 in total. By source, 1,496 Nuitee and 632 Tripadvisor. 86 percent of the reviews are dated 2026, 52 percent are in English; German, Russian and Turkish follow. Reviewer names are not stored; score, language, trip type, country code, date and text are.

One caveat: the fourteen-per-hotel cap puts heavily reviewed hotels on a par with lightly reviewed ones. This pool is not “the average of all guests in Antalya” but “a slice of the newest reviews of the hotels on our site”. Read the numbers that way.

Scores: lots of 10s, no middle

Of 2,128 reviews, 1,476 score 10, 248 score 9, 216 score 8, 54 score 7. Six and below total 134 reviews, 6.3 percent. Almost nobody is in the middle: guests are either very satisfied or clearly dissatisfied. What that means when booking: a hotel with an overall score of 8.5 is not “good out of 10”; it is below the great majority of the pool. Read anything under 9 carefully and anything under 8 with suspicion.

Who writes a negative

881 reviews have the negative field filled in; that is 41 percent of the whole pool. But 156 of those 881 wrote something like “nothing” or “nichts” in the negative field. The number of reviews with a real complaint is around 725, 34 percent. The difference by trip type is large:

Solo travellers write the most negatives, business travellers the fewest. Families both write few negatives and give many full marks. Our reading: on a family holiday the expectation is “let it go smoothly”, and when it does, the score is full; on a solo trip the expectation is more detailed and the eye sharper.

By destination

Antalya has the highest share of negatives among the six destinations. Our reading: the Antalya pool is made up of all-inclusive resorts, guests spend a week in the same property and judge everything from the food to the entertainment in one place. A guest spending two nights in a city hotel does not see that much detail. Dubai’s 18 percent is the reverse: short stays, high segment. Izmir’s average is low; our hotel pool there is from a more mixed segment.

What they praise

Every property on the hotel pages has eight category scores; they come from the booking provider’s review analysis. The average across 152 hotels:

Service is the top category in every destination. Cleanliness is the lowest in four destinations; in Istanbul and Rome the lowest is room quality. The gap is widest in Antalya: service 9.78, cleanliness 8.82. The review texts say the same: in English reviews the most frequent meaningful word is “staff”, 514 times; then “location” 274, “breakfast” 219, “clean” 196.

The practical consequence: a high service score does not set a hotel apart, everyone’s is high. The categories that separate hotels are cleanliness and room quality. Look at those first when comparing.

Who scores how

The average score by trip type is surprisingly even: couples 9.23, families 9.23, solo 9.23, business 9.35, groups 9.49. So saying “families are more generous” or “solo travellers are stingier” would be wrong; what differs is not the score but the habit of writing a negative. Group travel has the highest average; at 166 reviews it is a small slice, do not draw conclusions from it alone.

How to use this when booking

• Under 9 is “middling”, under 8 is “caution”. When 69 percent of the pool gives a 10, an 8.4 means a minority.
• Compare category scores, not the overall score. Service is high everywhere; cleanliness and room quality separate the hotels.
• Read the negative field, do not count it. One in six people who write a negative writes “nothing”. What the complaint is matters more than how many complained.
• Look at reviews from your own trip type. Planning a family holiday? Filter for family reviews; the hotel reviews pages have that filter.

Frequently asked questions

Hotels whose reviews you can read

• Lara Barut CollectionLara · $$$$9.62,721Prices
• Mardan PalaceLara · $$$9.6674Prices
• Cullinan BelekBelek · $$$$9.6277Prices
• Kaya BelekBelek9.41,075Prices
• Swandor KemerKemer · $$$Prices

All reviews, filterable by destination, hotel and trip type, are on the hotel reviews page. For the area decision, Lara or Belek; for autumn, the September–October article.