#Unrooming || A New Review Concept with Hotels.com

Before I go anywhere be it restaurant, show or holiday, I always check reviews. While I find bloggers ones fairly reliable, it’s sometimes hard to find one for that last minute hotel you booked or what restaurants to eat at when you are on said holiday. So I often find myself falling back on TripAdvisor but that can be a mine field with people complaining over minor things or the dreaded intensive for a better review. For example, one of the worst restaurants I’ve ever tried (I’m talking luke warm food, shody service and undercooked chicken kinda bad) has 4.5 stars, while I may have just been on a bad day it really makes me wonder about how much I can trust said reviews.

My reaction to false reviews.

I’m always far more trusting of reviews when they feature photos, however, photos are easy enough to manipulate with angles. As a former estate agent, I can say that standing in the very tight corner with the camera to the wall is not unheard of when photographing a smaller room. With that and good lighting along with hiding clutter can make a huge difference to photos, but not so much when you see it in person. So this is where Hotels.com‘s rather genius idea of unrooming comes in. Guests are invited to create a short video, sort of like an unboxing video that shows the room, their first impressions and gives a start rating. Here’s mine of The Regency in South Kensington;

As you can see, it gives you a chance for a quick tour of the room and to see it does actually look like the photos would lead you to believe. Unlike a stay I had through a different company last year where the photos were clearly of the room, only when it was refurbished a good few years back. I rated the The Regency a 4.5 out of 5 as it was clean, modern and all round a fabulous stay and great location. In fact I’ve already recommended it to family coming to stay in London.