How we rank hotels

The short version

Every ranking on this site is built from live booking rates, verified guest review data at scale, property specifications and published editorial coverage, then ordered by editorial judgement against five fixed criteria. No hotel pays to appear and no hotel pays to be removed.

The rest of this page is the working. I would rather show you how a page is put together, including the parts that are research rather than experience, than ask you to trust a number because it is printed in a serif font.

The five criteria, and what each one weighs

Room product 25%

Room size, layout, privacy, condition, view and the difference between entry rooms and higher categories.

Service 25%

Patterns in verified guest feedback, service consistency, complaint handling and the practical support a hotel provides.

Location 20%

Access, setting, surrounding noise, transfer time and how well the position serves the reason for the trip.

Food and beverage 15%

Restaurant range, breakfast, consistency, published menus and recurring guest feedback on quality and price.

Value 15%

The live rate against the room, facilities, service and closest credible alternatives for the same dates.

The five weights add to 100 percent. Editorial judgement decides how the evidence is applied, but the criteria do not change from hotel to hotel.

How a hotel gets into a guide

A guide starts with a shortlist that is longer than the final ranking, usually twice as long. I pull the properties that credibly compete at the top of a city or a coastline, then work through each one against the five criteria until an order emerges. A hotel earns its place because of what a reader would get for the money on the dates they are likely to travel, not because it is famous, not because it is new, and not because it is easy to book through a link.

Before a property can be written up it has to clear four practical tests.

One, five real photographs

Every listing carries a minimum of five real photographs of that property. My order of preference is fixed: the hotel's own press kit or official website first, the public Booking.com gallery second, and Unsplash Editorial only as a last resort. Before any photograph is committed I open the file and confirm it shows the building, room, pool, beach or grounds of the property named in the description. A source page label or a helpful file name is not proof. People, logos, maps, generic stock scenes and pictures of a different hotel are rejected. If I cannot assemble five confirmed photographs, the hotel does not qualify to be listed at all, however good it may be.

Two, a rate I can check

A hotel with no visible live rate cannot be compared on value, and value is 15 percent of the score. If I cannot see a real bookable rate for real dates, the property waits for a guide where I can.

Three, a drawback I can name

If I cannot write one specific honest drawback for a property, I do not know it well enough to rank it, so it comes off the shortlist rather than going in unqualified.

Four, evidence at scale

Service is judged from patterns across a large volume of verified guest feedback rather than a handful of reviews at either extreme. A hotel with too little recent data to read a pattern in is described as such or left out.

What disqualifies a hotel

The disqualifications are deliberately mechanical, so that they apply the same way on a page about Paris as on a page about Puerto Rico. A property comes off a guide when I cannot confirm five real photographs of it, when I cannot verify from the photograph that it is the property it claims to be, when there is no honest drawback I can name, when a closure or a renovation means the page would be describing a hotel that no longer exists, or when recent guest evidence consistently contradicts what the page says. Losing a place costs the hotel nothing with me and gains it nothing to complain about, because nobody is paying for the slot.

How rates are checked, and what to do with an old one

Rates come from live Booking.com availability through my affiliate integration, read on a specific day and written down with that day attached. That is why you will never see a bare price on this site. A nightly rate at this end of the market moves with the season, the event calendar and how full a hotel already is, so a figure without a date is closer to decoration than information.

Rates are rechecked when a page is updated, and the checked date moves with them. If the date on a figure is recent, treat it as what you would have paid that day for comparable dates. If it is three months old or more, treat it as a ranking signal rather than a quote: it still tells you that one hotel sits at roughly twice the price of another, which is the part that holds, while the absolute number needs a fresh look through the Check rates link. Where a page compares properties, the useful number is almost always the gap between them rather than either figure on its own.

Why every property carries a drawback

Every property on this site gets one specific honest drawback, and a vague one does not count. "Not for everyone" tells a reader nothing. A useful drawback is that the entry rooms face a car park, that the beach is imported sand, that the best restaurant closes two nights a week, or that the transfer is an hour longer than the marketing implies. It is the sentence that decides bookings, because the reader it puts off was going to be disappointed on arrival and the reader it does not put off now knows what they are buying.

The rule also keeps me honest about the limits of my own knowledge. A hotel I cannot criticise specifically is a hotel I have researched too lightly to recommend, which is why the drawback is a condition of being listed rather than a flourish at the end of a write up.

Where our numbers come from

• Live Booking.com rates through our affiliate integration.
• Aggregated guest scores from Booking.com and Tripadvisor.
• Specifications published by each hotel.
• Public editorial coverage from named publications.

Rates are rechecked when a page is updated and each page carries its own verified date. Rates move, so the price shown is evidence from that date rather than a promise of the price you will see later.

What we have experienced first hand, and what we have not

The airport lounge visits and luggage testing described on this site are first hand. Hotel rankings are built from research rather than a stay at every property. If a page includes a genuine first hand exception, it is named on that page. We do not imply a stay where one did not happen.

How we make money

Luxury Hotel Compare may earn an affiliate commission from Booking.com through CJ and from Priority Pass through AWIN. Commission never changes an ordering, and using a link costs the reader nothing. No hotel can pay for inclusion, position or removal.

The mechanics matter, so here they are plainly. A commission is paid on a stay that actually happens, after the reader has checked in and paid the hotel, and it is paid by the booking platform out of its own margin rather than added to the reader's bill. The rate through my link is the rate on the platform. Nothing is paid on a click, on a page view, or on a booking that is cancelled.

The reason this does not move a ranking is structural rather than a promise about my character. The commission rate does not vary between the hotels on a page, so there is no version of a ranking that pays me more than another version. Every affiliate link is hotel specific or search specific rather than a bare homepage link, every one carries a sponsored and nofollow attribute, and the disclosure sits above the first affiliate link on the page rather than in small print at the bottom. The only thing a different order would change is whether you trust the next page, which is worth more than any single booking.

Who writes this, and the editorial standard

Jack Williamson is the house name for LHC, a one person independent site in Sydney. More about my background is on the about page.

The standard behind every page is deliberately dull. One clear answer near the top, before the scenery. One comparison table on any page that ranks properties, with real headers and plain text cells so it can be read by a person or a machine. Answers to questions present in the page itself rather than hidden behind a script. British English, a single heading structure, and prose without dashes or promotional filler. Claims are sourced, figures are dated, and where experience belongs the page says whose it is. If a page cannot meet that standard yet, it waits.

Questions readers ask about trusting this site

Corrections

If something is wrong, please use the contact page. We will check the evidence, correct the page when needed and mark the corrected page with the date.

How often this is reviewed

Rates are rechecked when a page is updated and each page carries its own verified date. We also update a page when a material change becomes known, including a closure, reopening, renovation or change of management.