When you are choosing an apartment, reviews are the closest thing you have to first-hand experience, but a score of 8.6 or 4.8 stars tells you very little on its own. The same average can come from two hundred satisfied guests or from five enthusiastic acquaintances, and an apartment that had a cleaning problem two years ago may well have fixed it since. This guide shows you how to spend ten minutes on Booking.com and Airbnb reviews and work out whether an apartment is right for you. We took the platforms' rules from their official pages, and you will find the links in the sources at the end.
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Where the Number Next to the Apartment Comes From
Booking.com and Airbnb both calculate the overall rating in a simple way: as the average of all the ratings that remain published. Booking.com spells this out in its standards, saying it adds up all the scores and divides them by their number. Airbnb states that a listing's rating is the average of the overall ratings from all its reviews, and that reviews it has removed are not counted. Where the platforms really differ is in who may leave a review, by when, and when it appears.
| Rule | Booking.com | Airbnb |
|---|---|---|
| Who can review | only a customer who booked through Booking.com; it is enough that they arrived at the property | guest and host review each other after the stay |
| Review deadline | up to three months after check-out | 14 days after check-out |
| Scale | 1 to 10 | stars |
| When it appears | after a check against the content guidelines; newest reviews at the top | only once both sides have written a review or the 14 days are up |
| Overall score | average of all scores | average, shown only from three reviews upwards |
| Older reviews | Booking.com may stop showing them after 36 months | reviews removed by Airbnb do not count towards the average |
| Host's reply | the property can reply | the host can reply publicly |
Two practical points follow from the table. Airbnb's rule of publishing both reviews at once is meant to protect honesty: while writing, the guest cannot see what the host wrote about them and need not fear retaliation. Booking.com, on the other hand, allows three months to write a review, so a review from a recent stay sometimes appears only weeks later, and the newest reviews may not show a recent change straight away, whether for better or worse.
The Number and Freshness of Reviews
An average of five reviews can shift because of a single guest who had a bad day, while an average of two hundred holds steady and one exception barely changes it. So when two apartments have a similar score, compare them by how many reviews stand behind it, and if there are only a few, read every review in full rather than just the number. A new apartment with three excellent reviews is not necessarily worse; you simply know less about it so far.
The second thing is freshness, which often tells you more than the overall average. Booking.com sorts reviews from newest to oldest and lets you filter them by date and score, so in a minute you can see how guests rated the place over the last few months. If the newest reviews are clearly worse or better than the overall average, something has changed in the apartment, such as the cleaning, the equipment or the way the host communicates, and what matters to you is how things are now, not two years ago.
Also pay attention to when the reviews were written. Summer reviews talk about air conditioning and noise through open windows, winter ones about heating, so if you are travelling in November, look for reviews from the colder months too.
What Low Scores Tell You
You learn the most from the worst reviews, because praise tends to be general while complaints are specific. For every low review, ask yourself one question: is this about the apartment and how it is run, or about one particular guest's expectations? A complaint that the apartment is not in the centre, when the description clearly states a different district, says more about the guest than about the accommodation.
| Type of complaint | Example | How much weight to give it |
|---|---|---|
| Condition of the apartment | dirt, a mouldy shower, broken appliances | serious if several guests mention it |
| Surroundings | street noise, a building site next door, stairs with no lift | depends on you; being a light sleeper or travelling with a pushchair changes its weight |
| Communication and arrival | slow replies, unclear check-in instructions | important if you arrive late |
| Unmet expectation | "far from the centre", "small kitchen", even though the description says so | compare with the description; if it matches, it is information, not a fault |
| One-off incident | a water outage in the whole building, a broken lift | minor if it does not recur and the host explained it |
Sorted like this, the reviews show you which objections really concern you. A family with a pushchair will take a mention of stairs seriously, while a couple on a weekend break can happily ignore it, and anyone arriving at night should look out for comments about arrival and key handover. We explain how arriving without a reception desk works in the article on how self check-in works.
How to Spot a Recurring Problem
One complaint may be chance, but the same objection from three different guests in different months is a feature of the apartment. The quickest way to find out is to open all the reviews in your browser and use the search on the page (Ctrl+F, or "Find on page" on a phone) to enter the word you care about. Search in English as well as Slovak, because reviews of apartments in Bratislava are written in both languages.
- Cleanliness: clean, dirty, hair (čisto, špina, vlasy, uprat).
- Noise: noise, noisy, street (hluk, hlučn, okno, ulica).
- Bathroom: shower, water (sprcha, voda, zástena).
- Temperature: air conditioning, hot, cold (klimatizácia, teplo, zima, kúrenie).
- Arrival: check-in, key, code, parking (kľúč, kód, parkovanie).
While searching, keep an eye on the dates as well. If complaints about the shower appear up to a certain month and then disappear, the problem was probably fixed, which the host's reply will often confirm. If, on the other hand, the same thing keeps coming back in the latest reviews, expect to run into it yourself, or choose a different apartment.
The Host's Reply as a Signal
Both Booking.com and Airbnb let the host reply to a review publicly, and the way they do it shows you how they would behave if something went wrong during your stay. A good reply is matter-of-fact, responds to the specific objection and says what was done about it or why things are the way they are, while a bad one argues with the guest or lists everything the guest did wrong.
Notice, too, whether the host replies only to bad reviews or does so regularly. Regular replies suggest that someone actually reads the reviews, which is useful to know for a longer stay. A missing reply does not mean a bad host; you are simply missing one extra source of information.
Fake Reviews and What the Law Says
Slovakia's Consumer Protection Act No. 108/2024 Coll. treats submitting fake consumer reviews, or commissioning someone else to write them, as a misleading commercial practice. It also prohibits claiming that reviews come from real customers unless the trader takes reasonable steps to check this, and anyone who displays reviews must state whether and how they verify that the reviews come from people who actually bought or used the product.
Booking.com's rules state that only a customer who booked through it can write a review, that partners may not review their own property and that fake reviews are deleted. Even so, it pays to be wary of reviews that contain nothing specific, are written in similar words and appeared within a short time of one another. A cluster like that proves nothing by itself, but it should not be the only reason you choose an apartment.
A Ten-Minute Routine Before You Book
Once you have narrowed it down to two or three apartments by location and dates, go through these steps for each one. If you are still deciding where in the city to stay, start with the article on the best areas to stay in Bratislava.
- Check the number of reviews, and if there are fewer than ten, read each one in full.
- Sort by newest and compare the last few months with the overall average.
- Read the five worst reviews and sort them using the table above.
- Search for the words that matter to you: cleanliness, noise, parking, arrival.
- Read the host's replies to the worst reviews.
- Compare the objections with the description on the apartment's page and check what it says about parking, the lift and check-in.
- Look at the total price for your dates in the calendar, because ratings are only worth comparing between apartments at a similar price.
Reviews are only one part of the decision. You will find other criteria, such as equipment, cancellation terms and parking, in the checklist for choosing an apartment. Each of our apartments has its own page with a description, a list of equipment and a calendar with prices for specific dates, for example CASTE by Bratislava Castle or LUCAO in Dúbravka.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Can someone who never stayed in the apartment leave a review on Booking.com?
Under Booking.com's rules, only a customer who booked through Booking.com can write a review. It is enough that they arrived at the property, even if they did not complete the stay, but if they cancelled the booking before arrival, they will not receive the review form.
How long after a stay can a guest write a review?
On Booking.com, up to three months after check-out; on Airbnb, up to 14 days after check-out. Airbnb publishes the guest's and the host's reviews at the same time, once both have written them or once the 14 days are up.
Why does a new apartment on Airbnb show no rating?
Airbnb only displays the overall rating once a listing has at least three reviews. Until then, read the individual reviews and the apartment description, or ask the host anything you need to know before you book.
How many reviews are enough to trust the rating?
There is no fixed threshold, but the more reviews there are, the less a single unusual stay moves the average. With only a few, read every review in full; with many, focus on those from the last few months.
Can a host remove a bad review on Booking.com?
Booking.com's rules give the property the option to reply to a review. Booking.com does not publish reviews that break its content guidelines and, under its standards, deletes fake reviews, so a bad but truthful review stays on the page.
Conclusion
Accommodation reviews help you most when you look beyond the number itself, at how many people produced it, when they wrote their reviews and what they complained about. Ten minutes spent on the reviews and the apartment description saves you surprises on arrival and helps you pick a place whose weak points do not bother you. Take a look at our apartments, compare their descriptions with what you are looking for and check availability in the calendar.
Sources
- Booking.com: Guest review standards (three-month deadline, 1 to 10 scale, score calculation, display for up to 36 months, fake reviews, property replies). booking.com (checked October 2026).
- Booking.com: Content guidelines (who can write a review, cancelled bookings, ban on reviewing your own property). booking.com (checked October 2026).
- Airbnb: How do reviews work (14-day deadline, simultaneous publication, rating shown from three reviews, calculation of the average, host replies). airbnb.com (checked October 2026).
- Zákon č. 108/2024 Z. z. o ochrane spotrebiteľa (Act No. 108/2024 Coll. on consumer protection), Section 11(6)(a) and Annex 1, points 26 and 27 of the misleading commercial practices. slov-lex.sk (checked October 2026).
The platforms' rules may change, so check the current wording on their websites. Details of the apartments come from their own pages; prices are not given in this article because they vary with the dates.