The Best Ways To Book Hotels, Part 4: How To Check Guest Reviews On Google Maps
The Quick Summary
Here’s the gist: Seven specific words in guest reviews of any hotel will tell you everything you need to know about the place.
To check a hotel’s cleanliness, search the words “mold” and “bug”.
To check a hotel’s noise levels, search the words “loud”, “hear”, and “construction”.
To check a hotel’s internet reliability, search the words “wifi” and “internet”.
Google Maps shows different results in the review section search bar depending on how you use it.
Yep, that’s everything you need to know summed up in five sentences! Would you like to know more…?
The Importance of Guest Reviews
The first thing you’ll probably do after finding a hotel at a good price is check the guest reviews for any issues. Knowing how to properly vet a hotel using guest reviews on Google Maps is something I’ve learned from long term travel. Maps is your best friend for checking hotel quality. You don’t need an account to use Maps, reviews from other sites like Tripadvisor are included, languages are automatically translated into English, and the filter/search function is very powerful. That search function is the key. Knowing the best keywords will tell you everything you need to know about a hotel. Having now lived in hotels, hostels, and assorted Airbnb homes for over a year and a half, these are the things I look for within guest reviews to decide if I’ll make a reservation or not.
Some Hotels Are Gross
Whether we realize it or not, we all want to be excited for our hotel before we arrive because that feeling peaks our excitement to travel. That’s why nothing stops me from making a reservation faster than gross rooms. I’m not talking about being swayed by a review saying there was a hair on a “clean” towel. That happens in all hotels at some point. I’m talking about cleanliness issues that show a total lack of effort. The best keywords to search for when checking hotel room cleanliness a “mold” and “bug”. I’m sure you can guess why…
Mold is a terribly common problem. Spotting mold shows staff doesn’t care to clean well because it isn’t hard to see or prevent. Unless you want to shower with a fungus stay away if that keyword pops up. Checking for mold is most important in tropical or coastal climates thanks to moisture. Bed bugs are a trip killer and a deal breaker that’s far worse than mold. Remember that bed bug outbreak in Paris in summer 2023? We do, because we decided not to visit Paris after hearing about it! A bed bug problem means staff has not thoroughly checked the mattresses or cleaned the sheets. You’ll probably also see charming photos of bite marks or the bugs themselves in reviews. Even popular hotels like this one with a 4.1 rating may have reviews warning of bed bugs. Those reviews don’t pop up if you filter by “most relevant”, but they do pop up using the keyword “bug”. Pardon me Google, but bed bugs are probably the most relevant thing to tell me about.
Some Hotels Are Loud
Other than bed bugs, nothing kills a travel mood more than not getting rest thanks to noise. I’m not talking about things occasionally heard in every hotel like hallway noise or insufferable neighbors. I’m talking about constant noise from nearby bars, work zones, or other unique noises that force you to shove in earplugs. You might think the best word to search for is “noise”. It’s a solid check but not the best. The best keywords to search for when checking how noisy a hotel will be are actually “loud”, “hear”, and “construction”.
Most negative reviews I read mentioning noise are pretty specific. They’ll mention that “you can hear music from the bars across the street all night” or that “the air conditioner was loud” or even “the walls are so thin I could hear the couple next door fighting all night” without ever saying “noise”. See my image below for multiple examples. So if you search for “noise” be sure to also try “loud” or “hear”. Those words also cover some other fun things that woke us up at the crack of dawn along our travels like church bells rung every hour and even chickens and ducks being raised in a yard below our window.
Nearby construction is rare but it’s the worst when it exists. Guests always complain about it in reviews which is why I always search for “construction”. However, check the date of the review under the reviewer’s name. Google reviews over five years old are still shown so construction may be completed but the now misleading review still exists. More on that later.
Some Hotels Have Bad Internet
Slow internet in a hotel is my biggest pet peeve when traveling. Turns out the very first hotel we stayed in when starting long term travel gave us just that. It was a family operation with lovely hosts that provided terrible internet. The signal was so weak that neither of our phones nor my computer could use it without sitting next to our room’s door. The only way to browse anything from our bed was to each take a photo of the wifi’s QR code so we could scan it when the internet inevitably dropped from our phone. Spotty internet is a problem in every caliber of hotel from hostels to Hyatt resorts. The photo below shows a well reviewed 4 star hotel with many internet complaints.
I’ve noticed that there will either be one review or dozens of reviews citing slow internet connections. There’s rarely an in between. To check if there’s reliable internet search for the keywords “wifi” and “internet”. To be specific, don’t use a hyphen if you search for “wifi”. The word “Wi-Fi” is how my phone autocorrects but it’s rarely found in reviews so stick to “wifi”. Is that a pedantic thing to point out? You’d think, but try searching both words and I promise you’ll find “wifi” or “internet” far more helpful. Which leads me to another major point.
The Search Bar Does Not Think Like You
Early on I mentioned the Google Maps search function is your best friend for checking reviews. That’s absolutely true with one huge exception.
While searching, you need to type in the full word and not only part of the word. It’s a huge issue when checking if a restaurant has vegetarian food for Chandni because searching reviews for “vege” gives very different results than “vegetarian” which gives very different results than “veggie”. It’s also a problem when checking hotel guest reviews.
I mentioned you should check for construction in user reviews of hotels. If you shorten the word “construction” to “construct” (a complete English word) you will be provided different results - or even worse, no results. This is also a problem when searching for “noise” versus “noisy”, and similar to the issue of “wifi” versus “wi-fi” that I mentioned before - different but similar words. Described in the next section, the only work around I found is another insight into how Google Maps thinks.
Searching Keywords Versus Clicking Them
At the top of many user review sections is a list of words with a number next to the word. Those are the words most frequently used in past reviews plus the number of times it’s mentioned. They aren’t always there, but if they are, then I recommend reading them first.
For example, click “noise” and all reviews mentioning “noisy” will also pop up. Here’s the catch and my biggest problem with the Maps review section: You get different results if you search for that exact same word instead of clicking the word provided by Google.
The photo below shows a hotel in Mexico City with “noise” being the most commonly used word mentioned twenty two times (including its variations) on the left. However, if you type “noise” in the search bar as shown on the right, only three reviews are shown instead of twenty two. So what does that mean for checking user reviews? If a word you were going to search for is shown in the words provided by Maps, click the word instead of searching for it. That will show a more complete set of user reviews to read.
Other Entries In The Best Ways To Book Hotels Series
Part 1: Refundable And Non-Refundable Rooms
