TL;DR
On 10 October 2026 we searched Google Maps for "hotel" in 14 UK seaside towns and kept every hotel, B&B and guest house with at least 20 reviews: 1,353 listings. The median rating is 4.4. Almost a third, 29%, sit at 4.0 or below, and 11% are under 3.5. The towns differ more than you would expect: in Brighton half of the listings are at 4.0 or below, in Bournemouth 44%, in Eastbourne 41%, while in Scarborough, Llandudno and Torquay it is under a fifth.
Two patterns matter to an owner. Places with a lot of reviews rate lower: the median for listings with 500 or more reviews is 4.2, for those with fewer than 100 it is 4.6. And size changes how fast a rating moves. A Brighton hotel at 4.0 with 531 reviews needs about 133 new five-star reviews to show 4.2. A B&B at 4.0 with 80 reviews needs about 21. The reviews that move a rating come from asking every guest, the same way, at the right moment, with nothing attached: Google forbids incentives, and since April 2025 so does UK law.
What we measured, and what we did not
The method is simple enough to repeat. For each town we ran a Google Maps search for "hotel" and took the listings Google returned, up to 490 per town. From 2,266 places we kept the 1,715 that are places to stay (hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, inns, holiday lets) and, of those, the 1,353 with at least 20 reviews. Below 20 reviews a rating says more about one guest than about the place.
Three limits are worth stating before the numbers:
- It is what Google shows for "hotel" in each town, not a census of every bed in it. Large towns have more listings than Google returns for one search.
- 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.
- We grouped listings by the town Google gives in the address. Hove, Brixham and Conwy came back in the searches but had fewer than 15 rated listings each, so they are not in the table.
The table
| Town | Listings (20+ reviews) | Median rating | At 4.0 or below | Under 3.5 | Average reviews per listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackpool | 381 | 4.4 | 35% | 17% | 259 |
| Bournemouth | 110 | 4.1 | 44% | 18% | 600 |
| Torquay | 109 | 4.6 | 21% | 5% | 352 |
| Brighton | 105 | 4.0 | 50% | 15% | 531 |
| Llandudno | 104 | 4.5 | 18% | 7% | 337 |
| Scarborough | 101 | 4.6 | 16% | 3% | 340 |
| Skegness | 73 | 4.5 | 29% | 15% | 252 |
| Eastbourne | 69 | 4.2 | 41% | 17% | 423 |
| Newquay | 56 | 4.5 | 13% | 2% | 454 |
| Southport | 52 | 4.7 | 15% | 2% | 349 |
| Paignton | 52 | 4.7 | 13% | 4% | 246 |
| Great Yarmouth | 45 | 4.4 | 22% | 13% | 534 |
| Weston-super-Mare | 43 | 4.3 | 19% | 2% | 431 |
| Margate | 23 | 4.6 | 13% | 0% | 235 |
| All 14 towns | 1,353 | 4.4 | 29% | 11% |
Source: Google Maps listings returned for "hotel" in each town, read on 10 October 2026.
Three things the numbers say
The first is that the town sets the bar. A guest in Paignton scrolling a map sees a field where the median is 4.7, so a 4.3 there looks like a problem. The same 4.3 in Brighton is above the median. When you judge your own rating, compare it with the places a guest sees next to yours on the map, not with a national figure.
The second is that volume pulls ratings down to earth. Listings with 500 or more reviews have a median of 4.2; listings with fewer than 100 have 4.6. Part of that is size: a 120-room hotel on the front sees coach parties, stag weekends and the one room above the kitchen extractor, and every one of those guests can write. Part of it is that a small number of reviews is mostly friends, regulars and the guests who were delighted enough to bother. If you run a B&B on 4.8 from 45 reviews, that rating is fragile. Three tired-room reviews in August will show.
The third is a small one, and we flag it as small. Listings whose website is a chain's booking page (130 of them) have a median of 4.2, against 4.4 for the 1,223 independents. A chain has scale on its side, but not on Google Maps, where every branch is judged on its own reviews.
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 the number you need depends on how many reviews you already have. The rule, if you want to check our figures: new five-star reviews needed = current reviews x (target - current) / (5 - target).
| Starting point | Reviews today | Target | New 5-star reviews needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brighton-sized hotel | 531 | 4.0 to 4.2 | about 133 |
| Mid-size hotel | 250 | 4.0 to 4.2 | about 63 |
| Small B&B | 80 | 4.0 to 4.2 | about 21 |
| Guest house | 120 | 3.8 to 4.0 | about 25 |
| Blackpool median hotel | 259 | 4.4 to 4.5 | about 52 |
Two conclusions follow. A small place can change its public rating within one season, because 21 extra reviews is a month of asking at checkout. A large hotel cannot fix its score with a push, only with a habit: 133 five-star reviews is a year of steady asking for most seaside hotels. And because the display is rounded, the last 0.05 before the number ticks over is where a handful of reviews makes a visible difference.
Where the reviews come from
Google's own help page is plain about it: "To leave reviews, you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code." The same page says that offering incentives, "like free of cost or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews", is "strictly prohibited" (Google: Tips to get more reviews).
UK law points the same way. Since 6 April 2025, Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans commissioning a fake review or a review that hides that it was incentivised (legislation.gov.uk). A free breakfast for a five-star review is exactly that. We wrote up what the Act means for a small business in UK fake reviews law: what small firms must do.
So the levers left are timing, placement and asking everyone. What works in a hotel or B&B:
- Ask at checkout, face to face. "If you have a minute on the train, a Google review helps a small place like ours more than you would think." The guest who had a good stay is standing in front of you.
- Put the QR code where guests wait: the reception desk, the breakfast table, the back of the room key card, the welcome folder. A code that goes straight to your review form removes three taps of searching.
- Send one message after departure, the same afternoon, with the direct review link. Not a survey first.
- Ask every guest, not only the happy ones. Filtering who gets the link (review gating) breaks Google's rules, and the guests who would have written a fair 4 never get asked. We covered why in Review gating is dead.
- Tell the staff. The receptionist on the late shift checks out more guests than you do.
The direct link and QR code come from your Google Business Profile ("Ask for reviews"). You can also make a printable one in a minute with our free Google review QR code tool.
Replies matter more than most owners think
Two details from Google's help pages change how a reply should be written. A reply is public, appears as the business, and "the person who wrote the review is notified when you reply". And "customers can still change their review after reading your reply" (Google: Manage customer reviews).
That second sentence is the reason to answer a two-star review the same week. A guest who complained about a cold room in March and gets a short, specific reply ("The boiler on the second floor was replaced in April; we would like to have you back") sometimes edits the review. The ones who do not still leave the reply for every future guest to read. Google's advice for negative reviews is to be honest, apologise if needed, explain what you can and cannot do, and never share the guest's private details. Our longer set of examples is in How to respond to negative Google reviews.
Replies also count for something on the map. In its guide to local ranking, Google lists responding to reviews among the things a business can do, and describes prominence as based partly on "how many reviews you have" (Google: Tips to improve your local ranking).
Questions hoteliers ask us
How many five-star reviews do I need to raise my rating? Use the rule above with your own numbers. If you have 200 reviews at 4.1 and want 4.3, it is 200 x 0.2 / 0.7, about 58.
Can I offer a discount or a free drink for a review? No. Google prohibits it and, in the UK, the DMCC Act treats a review bought with an incentive as banned unless the review discloses it. Ask for an honest review and offer nothing.
Can I ask only the guests who were happy? No. That is review gating, and it breaks Google's policy. Ask everyone the same way.
Do I need software for this? Not to start. The direct link from your Business Profile, a printed QR code at reception and a habit of asking at checkout cover most of it. Software helps when there are too many reviews to read and answer by hand, or when you want your Google reviews shown on your own website.
What we make, plainly
We built ReviewQR for exactly this job in small places. It puts your Google reviews on your website as a widget and gives you a QR code and printable posters for reception, so guests land straight on your review form. The free plan has one widget and a simple QR code. ReviewQR Pro is $9 a month, with no trial and cancel any time. You can see it on widget.revioreputation.com.
If you run several hotels and want help answering reviews in bulk, our main platform does that: it drafts a reply to each review with AI, and you choose whether drafts wait for your approval or five-star thank-yous go out on their own.
Sources
- Our dataset: Google Maps listings returned for "hotel" in Blackpool, Bournemouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Great Yarmouth, Llandudno, Margate, Newquay, Paignton, Scarborough, Skegness, Southport, Torquay and Weston-super-Mare, read on 10 October 2026.
- Google Business Profile Help: Tips to get more reviews, Manage customer reviews, Tips to improve your local ranking, read on 15 October 2026.
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20.
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