The average hotel takes 3.7 days to reply to a guest review, and only two in three reviews get a reply at all. Usually the same small team, or the same duty manager, is also answering the phone and the inbox. When replies are slow in the place guests can see, the enquiries nobody can see are going unanswered too.
Foreword, from the founders
Go and look at your own hotel's reviews right now. Not the star rating, the replies. How many have one. How long it took to appear.
Across the industry, the average hotel takes 3.7 days to reply to a guest review, and only two in three reviews get a reply at all. Guests notice. Most expect a response to a bad review within a week, and hotels that do respond see their ratings and their review volume both climb.
That is worth knowing on its own. But it is worth knowing for a second reason too. A hotel that takes 3.7 days to reply to a review is not usually a hotel with a dedicated reviews team sitting idle. It is often the same small team, or the same duty manager, who also answers the phone, the inbox and the messages, already stretched, and the review reply is usually the one that can wait the longest without an immediate booking being lost. That does not prove they are slow on live enquiries too. But it is a reasonable prompt to check the channels that actually decide whether a guest books.
This report sets out what the review data shows, what it does and does not tell you about the rest of your guest communication, and what actually closes the gap on the channels where slow really does cost you the booking.
This is a hotels-only report. There is a wider report covering hotels, restaurants and bars together.
Read the full hospitality reportSection one
What the numbers actually say
Read plainly: most hotels are not keeping pace with what guests already expect on the one channel where slowness is easiest to see and count, and the hotels that do keep pace are measurably rewarded for it.
Source: Shiji Q2 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark, as reported by hoteltech.news.
Sources: ReviewTrackers, 2022. Proserpio and Zervas, Marketing Science, both via ada-cosmetics.com's 2026 UK hotelier guide.
Section two
What this does, and does not, prove
To be honest about what we are and are not claiming: these figures measure review responses specifically, replies to a guest's TripAdvisor or Google review after their stay. They say nothing directly about how fast a hotel answers the phone or a booking email. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we think they are a fair proxy for is a hotel's overall communication capacity. That is our judgement, not a claim the studies themselves make. Reviews are the one part of guest communication that happens in public and gets measured externally, so we can actually see the gap. The phone going unanswered and the booking email sitting for two days do not show up in anyone's benchmark report, but they are often handled by the same people, under the same pressure, as the reviews that take 3.7 days. It would be surprising if a team stretched thin enough to be slow with public replies were consistently quick on every other channel.
Section three
Why the enquiry gap costs more than the review gap
A slow review reply costs you a little reputation, a little rating. A slow enquiry reply costs you the booking outright. A guest emailing to ask about a room, calling to check availability, or messaging on Instagram about a group booking may book with you or move on to whichever hotel answers first. There is no week-long grace period the way there sometimes is with a review.
Whether the message comes by phone, email, chat or social, the guest is judging the same thing: did anyone answer, and did they answer well. Review-response performance is simply the one place that judgement becomes visible to everyone, including you.
Section four
What actually closes the gap
The businesses managing this well are not necessarily the ones with a dedicated reviews person. They are the ones whose guest communication, across every channel, is covered properly, so nothing sits for 3.7 days waiting for someone to be free, whether that is a review reply or a booking enquiry.
| Channel | What it does |
|---|---|
| Voice | Answers the phone in your hotel's voice, checks live availability, takes the booking, and hands complex calls to a person. |
| Reads the inbox by intent, replies accurately to enquiries and group requests, and captures the enquiry as a booking. | |
| Chat | Answers website and WhatsApp questions and books on the spot, day or night. |
| Social | Replies to Instagram and Facebook messages before they go cold. |
| Knowledge base | One source of truth every channel reads from, so every answer matches. |
What this means if you run a hotel
Pull up your own reviews and time it honestly. If replies are taking days, that is not really a reviews problem. It is a capacity problem, and it is very likely showing up on your phone and in your inbox too, just without anyone counting it. The fix is the same either way: make sure every channel is actually covered, so the gap stops being invisible and starts being closed.
Getting started
You do not have to take our word for any of this. The honest way to judge it is to hear it answer.
Build your hotel's agent, ask it the awkward questions a real guest would, and hear how it sounds before you commit to anything.
Frequently asked questions
How fast should a hotel reply to a bad review?
Within a week is the guest expectation baseline, sooner is better. Hotels that reply consistently see better ratings and more reviews overall.
Does a slow review reply actually mean anything about how fast we answer the phone?
Not directly, the two are different channels. But they are often handled by the same stretched team, so a hotel slow to reply to reviews is a reasonable candidate to also be slow on the phone and in the inbox, even though nobody is publishing a benchmark for those.
What actually fixes this?
Coverage across every channel guests use, phone, email, chat and social, so enquiries get answered the moment they arrive rather than whenever someone next has time.
What does it cost?
Plans from £299 a month, first month free.
Sources
We do not publish a figure unless it is real and attributable. The numbers in this report are:
- Average hotel review response time of 3.7 days and a 67.2% management response rate: Shiji Q2 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark, as reported by hoteltech.news (Shiji's own report is behind a lead-capture download). hoteltech.news
- 53% of guests expect a reply to a negative review within a week: ReviewTrackers, 2022. Rating improvement of roughly 0.12 stars and about 12% more reviews for hotels that respond: Proserpio and Zervas, Marketing Science. Both cited via ada-cosmetics.com's 2026 UK hotelier guide. ada-cosmetics.com