Travel is boring now
Distinctiveness has given way to uniformity as hospitality businesses adapt to online reviews.
One of the best places I ever stayed had some terrible reviews.
It was in Delhi, and unlike many of the sprawling commercial ‘homestays’ I encountered while exploring India by motorcycle, it carried a genuine sense of hospitality. The hosts, a couple of well-to-do empty-nesters, would sit down to dinner with the guests. They were engaging conversationalists and helpful friends for my onward journey, even managing to arrange a memorable tour of the Royal Enfield factory some 2,000 kilometres away in Chennai.
Like many Indians of a certain age and social class, they held views that newly arrived Westerners tend to struggle with: nostalgia for the Raj, a disdain for lower castes. I treated this as an interesting challenge to my own views, but some other guests had evidently found the hosts to be bigoted, and didn’t hesitate to say so online.
This was a more innocent time, and I had chosen the place on the strength of a guidebook recommendation. I hadn’t seen the one-star reviews, which might have dissuaded me from what turned out to be an excellent stay.
I now make a habit, when choosing a hotel or restaurant, of reading its one-star reviews. Rule of thumb: If an establishment is pissing off the right sort of people, you’ll probably have a memorable time there.
Outstanding places have become harder to find in the decade since I was in India because the incentives for the hospitality industry have changed. Critics and guide book authors, who rewarded distinctiveness, have given way to mass online reviews that punish imperfections and have no way to express ‘exceptionally good’.
Five stars used to be a rare signifier of excellence. Now it means that nothing was wrong. These concepts are not only different, they’re mutually exclusive. The same quirky touches that delight some guests, like my talkative hosts in Delhi, will rub others up the wrong way.
Since you can be given one to four stars but never six, the best way to get an average close to five is to be flawless and inoffensive. In other words, boring.
This is especially true of places that cater to international visitors, for whom unfiltered local cultures might be overwhelming and who might then leave a negative review. That’s fine for business hotels or straightforward holiday resorts; but for anything branded as experiential travel, from student backpacking to luxury tours, it feels dishonest.
Backpacker bars around the world are all effectively the same: a cheerful local bartender with fluent English, a glib message of peace and love scrawled on a wall, and cold beers from the national brewery to remind you which country you’re in. That can be perfectly nice, but it doesn’t broaden one’s horizons.
Flipping the bell curve
On some platforms such as Google Maps, where reviews are voluntary, there are still insights to be gained. In such cases, review scores are distributed in an inverted bell curve: lots of five-star reviews from people who had a great time, plenty of one-star reviews from people who very much didn’t, and very few in the middle, because most people don’t bother.
In such cases, numbers count. A small number of reviews – controlling for the age and size of the establishment – probably means that most people found it average; lots of five-star reviews means plenty had a great time.
For the diligent traveller determined to go somewhere with character, this is the moment to read the one-star reviews. Any indications of staff dealing robustly with a pushy and entitled customer are a plus, doubly so if the manager leaves a withering reply.
Other platforms like Airbnb strongly encourage reviews, and also require the host to rate the guest. This creates a strange social dynamic where both parties expect the scores to match, meaning that five stars is the default unless something was specifically bad. It has no way to distinguish the exceptional from the merely good; a five-star review simply means that basic standards were met.
There are certain apps where this dynamic doesn’t apply and ratings are distributed according to a normal bell curve. A friend recently showed me Untappd, a platform for beer lovers, where the average score is between 3 and 4. It’s a sign of how rare this is that I was slightly offended when she gave my favourite beer a 3.5.
These apps are populated by enthusiasts who uphold statistical correctness. Like traditional critics, a self-selecting group of informed people are giving an honest opinion and the aggregate score is therefore a useful metric. If you’re looking for something exceptional rather than merely avoiding the risk of slight discomfort, it’s a better model.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for a limited franchise – at least when you’re looking for a place to hang your hat for a few nights.