What’s Up with the TripAdvisor Thumbs Up?

The TripAdvisor Thumbs Up, or “Recommended By” percentage, is at first glance a bit of a mystery to many hoteliers. It shows up on some properties’ pages, but not others, depending on the user’s browser and the type of business. Additionally the question, “Would you recommend this hotel to others?” is no longer on the TripAdvisor guest review form.

So, how is TripAdvisor calculating the Thumbs Up? Some in the TripAdvisor support community have figured it out, but here’s our rundown.

The “Recommended By” percentage is a feature that TripAdvisor chooses to display for certain properties. It indicates whether users would recommend this property to others. This feature is not available on all properties, like restaurants, and it is only available on properties that use third party booking sites like Orbitz and Expedia.

TripAdvisor appears to roughly calculate the “Recommended By” percentage by adding up the number of four and five star reviews, and looking at those as a percentage of total reviews. So, for example:

At this property, the four and five star reviews add up to 91% of its total reviews.

5 star: 490 reviews
4 star: 222 reviews
Total: 782 reviews

(490+222)/782 = about 91%, which is roughly the thumbs up percentage for that property.

Learn about what’s trending, review response metrics, and a look forward at hospitality reputation in our 2018 Reputation Benchmark Report. Available free for download.