How to respond to Tripadvisor and Booking.com reviews

GuestJourney editorial team, edited by Alon Shkuri

Published 27 September 2026 · Updated 2 November 2026 · 8 min read

Marco slides a blank postcard into a brass letter rack

How to respond to Tripadvisor reviews comes down to this: you need a free Management Center account, and a reply that offers gifts or money is removed. On Booking.com you reply from the Extranet or the Pulse app, in the language of the review or in English, and their team reads it first, for up to 72 hours. Neither can be answered from Google, and our helper Marco answers neither today, so this guide is about reviews that stay with you.

The rules, side by side

Booking.com

Write in the language of the review or in English. Replies in other languages are not published.
You can only reply to a review with a title or comments.
Keep it short, true and original. Make it personal, and acknowledge a bad experience.
The content guidelines cover replies too: no personal data about others, nothing promotional, no contact details used to advertise.

Tripadvisor

Claim and verify your property first. No character limit, but be concise.
No gifts, services or money: such a reply is removed. No promotion, and links only if relevant to the review.
No names, addresses or phone numbers that identify someone. No quoted guest emails or snippets of reviews.
No threats, no accusation of fraud, no guessing who wrote it, no comments on Tripadvisor's policies.
No lists or bullets, and no machine translation that cannot be read.
Your own email address is allowed, if you need more information from the guest.

Sources: Booking.com Partner Help, and Tripadvisor's guidelines and how-to.

Where each reply goes

Replying to reviews, per site
	Booking.com	Tripadvisor	Google
Where	Extranet or Pulse app	Management Center (free)	Your Business Profile
Checked first?	Yes, up to 72 hours	Yes, most within a few business days	Yes, usually up to 10 minutes, sometimes up to 30 days
Language	The review's language or English, others are not published	No rule we found	No rule we found
Change it later?	Edit or remove on the Extranet	No editing: delete it and submit again	Yes

The Google column comes from Google's help page. Your Google profile can also show scores from other sites, but on Google you only reply to Google reviews.

Booking.com counts the newest review most

Booking.com's advice is short and sensible: make it personal, keep it brief and accurate, write original replies, and acknowledge a bad experience. One fact changes how much this matters. Since January 2025 your overall score is weighed by recency, so the newest review has the biggest effect. Every new score counts for more than the ones before it, and a review's weight falls as it gets older. With few reviews, Booking.com gives the most recent ones the same weight, to keep the score from swinging. The pages we read give no formula, so we can't tell you how much last week weighs against last year.

Booking.com sends the invitation itself, about 48 hours after check-out, and the guest has three months to answer. So a complaint about a Saturday in August can land in November. The score covers the last three years, and reviews stay on your page for 36 months.

As far as these pages tell us, a reply does not enter the score. It is what the next guest reads next to it. Mind the language rule: a reply in a third language simply does not get published. A German guest gets German or English, not French.

On Tripadvisor, watch the ten most recent

Tripadvisor leaves the choice to you: some businesses answer every review, others mainly the critical ones. Its how-to advises replying to negative reviews and to ones where you can correct a fact, and keeping at least one reply among your ten most recent reviews, so a reader does not have to dig.

One tip sits awkwardly next to our own advice to name the guest's actual point: Tripadvisor warns that replies can be found by search engines and says to avoid repeating something negative from the review. You can do both: name the subject, such as "your arrival on Saturday", and leave out the details.

The same story, in other words per site

A guest sometimes posts the same story on more than one site. Answer each one on its own site, briefly, with the same substance. One long reply pasted everywhere reads like a template to the next guest, and Booking.com asks for original replies.

Say Tom, who left two stars on Google about a Saturday check-in at Hotel Kadeloft, tells the same story on Tripadvisor and on Booking.com. And Jonas, who found the hotel on Booking.com, writes there in German about the noise from the street.

Hotel Kadeloft, Anna, Tom and Jonas are made up, and so are these replies. Only write what is true at your hotel: if nothing changed on Saturdays, leave that sentence out.

Tripadvisor, about the Saturday check-in

Thank you for writing about your arrival on Saturday. That is not how a weekend with us should begin, and I am sorry. Since then two of us are at the desk on Saturday afternoons. If you would like to tell me more, you can write to me directly: my address is on our contact page.

No name, no offer, no list, nothing copied from the review. You may also give your email address in the reply. Your display name goes in the form, so no signature.

Booking.com, the same story

Hello Tom, thank you for your review. You drove three hours and then stood at our desk with nobody saying a word, and that is on us. We now have two people on Saturday afternoons. I am glad the room was fine; the welcome should have been too. Anna

Same substance, its own words. No address here: the guidelines bar contact details used to advertise, and we would not test that line.

Booking.com, in German

Guten Tag Jonas, vielen Dank für Ihre Bewertung. Es tut mir leid, dass das Zimmer zur Straße nachts laut war. Sagen Sie uns beim nächsten Mal vorher Bescheid, dann geben wir Ihnen ein ruhigeres Zimmer. Anna

German or English gets published, French or Dutch does not. Translate it back before you send it, so you know what it says.

Tom's Google reply, and the full shape of a reply with examples in four languages, are in how to respond to hotel reviews.

The same rules everywhere

Thank the guest and name the actual point they made.
No personal details, and no public offers of money or free nights.
Reply in the language of the review where the site allows it.
End with a real name, except on Tripadvisor, where the form takes care of it.

Marco writes in an empty notebook with a giant fountain pen

When a review can come down

Neither site takes a review down because you disagree with it. On Booking.com you ask through the Extranet: Inbox, Booking.com messages, See contact options, Guest Reviews. These are its grounds:

The guest cancelled and confirmed they did not arrive.
You cancelled at least 24 hours before check-in.
The booking is marked as a no-show and the review does not describe the guest's experience.
You cancelled on the day of check-in because of an invalid credit card.
Booking.com determines the guest reviewed the wrong property.
Booking.com believes the guest is using the review to blackmail you, with written evidence.

An anonymous review is no ground, and neither is a guest who arrived, was unhappy and left. If a guest tells you they made a mistake in a review, you can point them to their own Booking.com account to correct it.

Tripadvisor's list is shorter: posted to the wrong property, against its review guidelines, or suspicious. It will not act as referee in a dispute about the facts. You report through Report a Review in the Management Center, which can take up to two business days, with no guarantee. Reply anyway: your side is there while the report is looked at, and if the review goes, your reply goes with it.

Which site comes first

If you have ten minutes, we would start with your biggest single channel. At Kadeloft, 40% of revenue comes through Booking.com, so that is Anna's first stop. Don't know your split? Booking.com holds 66.1% of OTA bookings in Europe, so it is a fair first guess.

Then Google, because that is where someone who already knows your name ends up, and it is the route to a direct booking. Then the newest bad review anywhere: on Booking.com because it counts most in your score, on Tripadvisor because of those ten most recent.

Twenty minutes on Friday, no daily checking

You do not have to look every day, and with two people at the desk on busy days you won't. Tripadvisor's own tips say to respond quickly, so a week is a compromise. In our view it is one a small hotel can keep. This is Anna's.

10:00TripadvisorThe email alerts are on, so she only opens it if a mail came, through the Respond link.
10:05Booking.comExtranet, Guest reviews, Reply. Newest first, in the language of the review or in English.
10:15Her ruleEvery bad review gets a reply. On Tripadvisor, at least one of the last ten has one.
10:20GoogleA third stop, unless Marco has those.

Anna's Friday morning at Hotel Kadeloft, made up

Set it up once. On Tripadvisor: profile icon, Account info, Settings, Subscriptions, Emails for Owners, Reviews & Questions.
Friday suits the checks. Booking.com's team takes up to 72 hours, so a reply sent on Friday at ten is through by Monday at ten.
One kind does not wait. Tripadvisor tags reviews that may contain safety information. We would not leave those until Friday.

None of this is something Marco does today. He answers Google reviews only, not Booking.com or Tripadvisor, and he does not ask hotel guests for reviews. We would rather tell you where the rest belongs than pretend we cover it.