Do Negative Online Reviews Being Deleted Pose a Reputation Risk for Hotels?

The removal of a negative review about a hotel or restaurant may seem relieving for the business in the short term. However, new data shows that deleting reviews can affect not only the average score but also the customer's trust in the platform and the business.

In a study conducted by HolidayCheck in Germany in July 2026, approximately 30% of participants who had made online evaluations in the last two years reported that at least one of their reviews had been removed from the internet. A group of 12% stated that multiple reviews had been deleted. A notable aspect of the study is the distribution of the removed reviews: 45% were negative or predominantly negative, 31% were neutral, and only 16% were positive or predominantly positive evaluations.

The research was conducted between July 14-28, 2026, with 1,200 individuals aged 16-69 in Germany. Of the participants, 730 had written at least one online review about a product or service in the previous two years. The study was carried out by HolidayCheck in collaboration with Media Market Insights and Kantar.

It is important to make a significant distinction when evaluating these results: not every deleted negative review means censorship.

Removing Fake Reviews is the Platform's Responsibility

For online review systems to be reliable, fake, manipulative, or reviews not based on real customer experiences need to be cleaned up.

Google Maps policy considers evaluations not based on real experiences with a business as "fake interactions" and states that they can be removed. It is also prohibited for businesses to request positive reviews in exchange for money, discounts, or free products; or to encourage customers to change or remove their negative reviews. Google also does not allow businesses to selectively request positive evaluations only from satisfied customers.

Tripadvisor also states that it can impose penalties such as ranking penalties, warning labels, and account restrictions on businesses for fake reviews and score manipulation. The platform reports that it moderated 4.2 million reviews in 2025.

Therefore, it is normal for a business to report a review that is genuinely fake, written by a competitor, contains insults, or violates platform policies as part of reputation management.

The problem begins when a criticism based on a real customer experience is attempted to be removed simply because it is uncomfortable for the business.

Why Does HolidayCheck Argue for "Protecting Criticism"?

In the statement published with the HolidayCheck research, the platform emphasizes that genuine customer criticism is one of the key elements of a reliable review system.

According to the company's statement, especially in Germany, businesses can use processes that require the review owner to prove that they are a real customer. The debate over whether these processes can lead to the removal of critical reviews has been ongoing for a long time.

HolidayCheck calls for a more transparent system against the increasing requests for review deletions, especially through professional legal services, and states that it prefers to wait for the outcome of the legal process rather than automatically removing reviews in controversial situations.

It should also be noted that this statement reflects HolidayCheck's own commercial and editorial position. Since the research was commissioned by the company, the results should not be considered as an independent public study.

Trust Can Also Decrease When a Review is Deleted

One of the most important findings in the research is the effect of review deletion on user behavior.

26% of those whose reviews were deleted stated that their trust in the business they reviewed decreased, while another 26% indicated that their trust in the review platform fell.

40% of participants said that knowing a review could be removed at the request of the business might reduce their willingness to write online evaluations in the future. 13% said they might use a more positive tone to prevent their criticism from being removed, while 5% stated they might completely refrain from sharing their opinion.

These rates are significant for hotel managers.

While trying to reduce the number of critical reviews to raise the online score may improve profile visibility in the short term, if customers get the impression that the review system is filtered, a more significant asset may be harmed: reliability.

Academic Research Also Points to the Value of "Responding"

There are studies in hospitality literature examining the impact of responding to negative reviews instead of removing them.

An experimental study published in Tourism Management showed that responding to negative evaluations positively affects potential customers' perceptions of the business's reliability and level of customer care. The study found that timely responses with a more human tone were perceived more positively.

Another study published in Marketing Science found that after hotels began responding to reviews, they were associated with an average increase of 0.12 stars in scores and about a 12% increase in review volume. Researchers also found that in businesses where management actively responded, the number of short and defensible negative reviews decreased, while the remaining negative evaluations became more detailed.

A Turkey-focused academic study published in 2026 also examines the responses of boutique hotels in Cappadocia to negative reviews on Tripadvisor in terms of corporate reputation and customer relations. This indicates that the response to online complaints is increasingly becoming a separate management area in Turkish hospitality.

Not Every Negative Review Should Be Treated the Same

When a hotel manager's first reflex is "How can we remove this review?", important operational data may be missed.

Negative evaluations can be divided into at least four groups.

The first group consists of real service errors. Criticisms such as room cleanliness, long check-in times, lack of breakfast service, staff behavior, or maintenance issues can be examined by the business, and operational actions can be taken.

The second group is expectation mismatches. There may be a difference between the product the guest purchased and the experience they expected. Here, product descriptions, photos, or information on the sales channel should be reviewed.

The third group consists of content that violates platform policies. If there are fake experiences, spam, personal attacks, conflicts of interest, or manipulation, the business can send a removal request to the platform.

The fourth group includes criticisms based on real experiences but not agreed upon by the business. Categorizing these with fake reviews poses a risk in terms of reputation management.

What Should a Good Manager's Response Look Like?

When responding to a negative review, the business's goal should not be to "defeat" the reviewer in front of everyone.

The response can be read not only by the reviewer but also by hundreds of potential guests considering making a reservation in the future.

Therefore, the response should be short, concrete, and non-defensive.

If the complaint actually occurred, the issue should be acknowledged, and the action taken should be explained. If the information is incorrect, the correct information should be provided without entering into a personal dispute. Details requiring reservation or personal data should not be discussed in public; communication should be moved to a private channel.

Copying the same "Thank you for your valuable feedback" text to all evaluations can create a sense of automated response rather than building trust.

Review Removal Services Can Also Create Risks

As the online reputation market grows, third-party services promising to "remove bad reviews" are also increasing.

Hotel and restaurant managers need to be cautious here.

According to Google's current policy, it is explicitly prohibited for a business to offer money, discounts, or other incentives to a customer to change or remove their negative evaluation. If fake reviews or score manipulation are detected, the business's profile may be temporarily blocked from receiving new reviews, existing evaluations may be hidden, or a consumer warning may be added to the profile indicating that fake reviews have been removed.

Therefore, reputation management should not be designed as a service to "make negativity invisible" but as a system to separate real issues, report fake content, and professionally respond to genuine criticism.

The Main Issue for Hotels in Turkey is Bigger Than the Score

The HolidayCheck research was conducted in Germany. Therefore, the 30% review deletion rate cannot be used as a measure of consumer behavior in Turkey.

However, since hotels in Turkey receive intense bookings, especially from Germany, the UK, and other European source markets, the trust environment created on platforms like HolidayCheck, Tripadvisor, and Google can directly affect sales performance.

As much as a property receiving a score of 4.6 instead of 4.5, the natural and genuine appearance of reviews also plays a role in consumer decision-making.

Constantly perfect scores, reviews written in similar language, or profiles with almost no criticism can create suspicion rather than trust for some users.

The digital reputation of the hotel should demonstrate how it behaves when problems occur rather than looking perfect.

Stafflink's View

The goal in online reputation management should not be to eliminate all negative reviews.

In our view, businesses should first ask, "Is this review negative?" instead of "Is this review real and what does it tell us about operations?"

Removing reviews that are fake, manipulative, or contain policy violations may be legitimate and necessary. However, attempting to eliminate a genuine guest criticism solely because it lowers the score can create long-term trust loss in exchange for short-term score gain.

The strongest digital reputation is not of the business with no criticism; it is of the business that can read, respond to criticism, and turn recurring issues into operational data.