TL;DR
On 25 July 2026 we searched Google Maps for "hotel", "restaurante" and "comida rápida" in Madrid and Barcelona and kept every hotel, hostel and restaurant with at least 20 reviews: 649 listings. The median rating is 4.3, and 24% of listings sit at 4.0 or below.
The split that surprised us is chains against independents. Among fast-food places, 64% of chain branches (69 of 108) are at 4.0 or below. Among independent fast-food places it is 20% (37 of 181). Twenty of the 21 McDonald's branches in our sample are at 4.0 or below. Hotels go the other way, and there the groups do better: 23% of independent hotels are at 4.0 or below, against 11% of hotels that belong to a group.
We ran the same searches in Lisbon and Porto in October. Lisbon looks like Madrid and Barcelona, only sharper: 76% of chain fast-food branches are at 4.0 or below, and all 15 McDonald's branches we found. Porto has the highest ratings of the four cities.
The other thing an owner should know is how heavy these ratings are. The median Madrid hotel in our sample has 2,235 reviews. To move that hotel from 4.0 to 4.2 takes about 559 new five-star reviews.
What we measured, and what we did not
We collected this data in July to find businesses we could write to, and then realised the numbers say something on their own. The method is easy to repeat.
- For each city we ran Google Maps searches in Spanish and took the listings Google returned, up to 140 per search. In Madrid we searched "hotel", "restaurante" and "comida rápida". In Barcelona only "hotel" and "comida rápida", so there is no Barcelona sit-down restaurant row.
- We kept listings whose Google category is a place to stay (hotel, hostel, aparthotel) or a place to eat. We dropped 23 listings Google mixed in, such as a ferry terminal, two viewpoints and a museum, and 5 listings in Pozuelo de Alarcón.
- We kept listings with at least 20 reviews. That removed 10 of 659.
- A chain fast-food branch is a branch of a national or international brand (McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Five Guys, Rodilla, Pans & Company, Telepizza, Domino's, Popeyes and a few others). A chain hotel is one whose Google listing links to a hotel group's website (NH, Catalonia, Meliá, Marriott, IHG, Eurostars, Ilunion, Hilton, Accor, H10, Barceló and others). Everything else is independent.
Three limits are worth saying before the numbers:
- This is what Google shows first for each search, not a census. Google puts big, busy listings at the top, so our sample is heavy: the median listing has 1,524 reviews, and only 10 of the 649 have fewer than 50. A new place with 30 reviews competes against that field.
- The rating is the one Google displays, rounded to one decimal place. A listing showing 4.0 can be anywhere from 3.95 to 4.04.
- The data is from 25 July 2026, in high season. Ratings this heavy move slowly, but some will have changed since.
The table
| Segment | Listings | Median rating | At 4.0 or below | Under 3.5 | 4.5 or above | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madrid, hotels | 126 | 4.4 | 14% (18) | 2% (2) | 32% (40) | 2,235 |
| Barcelona, hotels | 139 | 4.3 | 18% (25) | 4% (6) | 27% (37) | 1,641 |
| Madrid, restaurants | 95 | 4.4 | 7% (7) | 0% (0) | 49% (47) | 1,624 |
| Madrid, fast food | 137 | 4.1 | 43% (59) | 12% (16) | 23% (32) | 1,007 |
| Barcelona, fast food | 152 | 4.3 | 31% (47) | 7% (10) | 36% (55) | 1,092 |
| All | 649 | 4.3 | 24% (156) | 5% (34) | 33% (211) | 1,524 |
Source: Google Maps listings returned for each search, read on 25 July 2026. Listings with 20 or more reviews.
Chains against independents
| Fast food | Listings | Median rating | At 4.0 or below | 4.5 or above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chain branches, both cities | 108 | 3.9 | 64% (69) | 7% (8) |
| Independents, both cities | 181 | 4.4 | 20% (37) | 44% (79) |
| Chain branches, Madrid | 68 | 4.0 | 60% (41) | |
| Independents, Madrid | 69 | 4.3 | 26% (18) | |
| Chain branches, Barcelona | 40 | 3.8 | 70% (28) | |
| Independents, Barcelona | 112 | 4.4 | 17% (19) |
How the ratings spread, fast food only:
| Rating band | Chain branches (108) | Independents (181) |
|---|---|---|
| Under 3.5 | 13 | 13 |
| 3.5 to 3.9 | 45 | 15 |
| 4.0 | 11 | 9 |
| 4.1 to 4.4 | 31 | 65 |
| 4.5 to 4.7 | 6 | 49 |
| 4.8 to 5.0 | 2 | 30 |
By brand, for brands with at least 8 branches in the sample. Small numbers, so read them as a description of these branches, not of the brand everywhere:
| Brand | Branches | Median rating | At 4.0 or below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burger King | 27 | 3.8 | 18 |
| McDonald's | 21 | 3.6 | 20 |
| Taco Bell | 13 | 3.8 | 8 |
| Five Guys | 8 | 4.2 | 0 |
| Rodilla | 8 | 3.9 | 7 |
| Pans & Company | 8 | 4.0 | 4 |
Hotels:
| Hotels | Listings | Median rating | At 4.0 or below | 4.5 or above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group hotels, both cities | 154 | 4.4 | 11% (17) | 33% (51) |
| Independent hotels, both cities | 111 | 4.2 | 23% (26) | 23% (26) |
| Group hotels, Madrid | 65 | 4.4 | 5% (3) | |
| Independent hotels, Madrid | 61 | 4.3 | 25% (15) | |
| Group hotels, Barcelona | 89 | 4.3 | 16% (14) | |
| Independent hotels, Barcelona | 50 | 4.2 | 22% (11) |
What we think the numbers say
Fast food is where Google reviews hurt most, and it hurts the brands. A burger chain branch gets a lot of visitors, a lot of them in a hurry, and the person who waited twenty minutes for a delivery order at the counter is the one who writes. Nobody at the branch asks the happy customers. Five Guys is the exception in our sample, with all eight branches above 4.0, so this is not something a chain is doomed to.
The independents show the other side. A kebab shop, a burrito bar or an empanada counter with an owner behind it sits at a median of 4.4. Those places tend to have fewer reviews (median 616, against 2,014 for chain branches), and more of them come from regulars. That makes the rating higher, and also more fragile.
With hotels it is the other way round. Group hotels rate higher than independents, by a median of 4.4 against 4.2. In our UK seaside study it was the opposite: listings that link to a chain's booking page had a median of 4.2, against 4.4 for independents. So we would not turn this into a rule. Our guess is that Spanish hotel groups have someone whose job is guest reviews, and most small hotels do not. A quarter of independent hotels in Madrid sit at 4.0 or below, and almost none of the group hotels do.
Very few places in this sample lack a website: 5 of 265 hotels, 10 of 95 restaurants and 39 of 289 fast-food places. That is not the gap. The gap is the rating.
Lisbon and Porto, read in October
On 18 October 2026 we ran the same searches in Portuguese in Lisbon and Porto: "hotel", "restaurante" and "fast food". Same rules as in Spain: places to stay and places to eat only, 20 reviews or more, chains defined the same way (in Portugal the brand list adds H3, Honorato, Vitaminas and Burger Ranch). That left 572 listings, 344 in Lisbon and 228 in Porto. One caveat: in Porto, Google's "fast food" results drifted into ordinary restaurants and brunch places, so the Porto fast-food row is much less fast food than the Lisbon one.
| Segment | Listings | Median rating | At 4.0 or below | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lisbon, hotels | 98 | 4.4 | 26% (25) | 668 |
| Lisbon, restaurants | 129 | 4.6 | 11% (14) | 530 |
| Lisbon, fast food | 117 | 4.3 | 36% (42) | 725 |
| Porto, hotels | 66 | 4.5 | 14% (9) | 374 |
| Porto, restaurants | 49 | 4.4 | 6% (3) | 386 |
| Porto, fast food | 113 | 4.5 | 7% (8) | 697 |
Source: Google Maps listings returned for each search, read on 18 October 2026. Listings with 20 or more reviews.
The chain pattern holds in Lisbon, and it is sharper than in Spain. 76% of chain fast-food branches (28 of 37) are at 4.0 or below, against 18% of independents (14 of 80). All 15 McDonald's branches in our Lisbon sample are at 4.0 or below, with a median of 3.8, and so are all 3 KFC branches. Porto is gentler: 5 of 14 chain branches are at 4.0 or below, and 1 of the 4 McDonald's. Across both cities it is 65% (33 of 51) against 9% (17 of 179).
Hotels repeat the Spanish pattern as well. 9% of group hotels (4 of 44) are at 4.0 or below, against 25% of independents (30 of 120). In Lisbon alone it is 10% against 32%.
Portuguese listings carry fewer reviews, so the arithmetic is kinder. The median Lisbon hotel has 668 reviews, and going from 4.0 to 4.2 takes about 167 new five-star reviews. The median Porto hotel has 374, so about 93.
The arithmetic of moving a rating
Google shows the average of all your reviews. To lift it you need new reviews above your current score, and how many depends on how many you already have. The rule, if you want to check our numbers: new five-star reviews needed = current reviews x (target - current) / (5 - target).
| Starting point | Reviews today | 4.0 to 4.2 needs |
|---|---|---|
| Median Madrid hotel | 2,235 | about 559 five-star reviews |
| Median Barcelona hotel | 1,641 | about 410 |
| Median independent fast-food place | 616 | about 154 |
| A neighbourhood restaurant | 200 | about 50 |
| A new place | 80 | about 20 |
A large hotel in central Madrid cannot fix its rating with a push. Five hundred reviews is a year or more of asking every guest. A small place can move in one season. For both, the reviews come from the same habit: ask every customer, at the right moment, with nothing attached.
Asking without breaking the rules
Google's help page says it plainly: you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code to leave a review. The same page says that offering incentives, "like free of cost or discounted goods or services", in exchange for reviews is prohibited (Google: Tips to get more reviews, read on 16 October 2026).
What we have seen work in hotels and restaurants:
- Ask at the end, face to face. At the hotel desk at checkout, at the restaurant when the bill comes.
- Put a QR code where people wait. On the table, at the counter, on the back of the room key card. A code that opens your review form directly saves three taps of searching.
- Ask everyone the same way. Picking only the happy customers breaks Google's rules, and the people who would have written a fair 4 never get asked.
- Answer the bad ones the same week. The person who wrote the review gets notified of your reply, and can still change the review afterwards (Google: Manage customer reviews).
The direct link and QR code are in your Google Business Profile, under "Ask for reviews". You can also print one in a minute with our free Google review QR code tool.
The data
You can download the 649 rows we used (city, segment, chain or independent, rating, review count, whether the listing has a website, search term, date). We removed business names and Google place IDs. Download the CSV. The 572 Lisbon and Porto rows are in a second CSV, same columns. If you use the numbers, a link to this page is all we ask.
What we make
We built ReviewQR for small places that want more Google reviews and want to show them. It puts your Google reviews on your website as a widget and gives you a QR code for the table or the desk. The free plan has one widget and a simple QR code. Pro is $9 a month, no trial, cancel any time. See widget.revioreputation.com.
Sources
- Our dataset: Google Maps listings returned for "hotel", "restaurante" and "comida rápida" in Madrid and for "hotel" and "comida rápida" in Barcelona, read on 25 July 2026.
- Our dataset: Google Maps listings returned for "hotel", "restaurante" and "fast food" in Lisbon and Porto, read on 18 October 2026.
- Google Business Profile Help: Tips to get more reviews, Manage customer reviews, read on 16 October 2026.
- Our earlier study of 1,353 UK seaside hotels, read on 10 October 2026.
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