Booking.com's cleanliness score is a separate 1-10 guest-rated category, sitting alongside staff, facilities, comfort, location and value, that guests can rate after every stay. It does not mathematically make up your headline Guest Review Score, but a weak cleanliness score damages guest confidence, review content, and repeat and word-of-mouth bookings — so it is worth understanding exactly how it works and what to fix first.
What is the Booking.com cleanliness score?
According to Booking.com's Partner Hub, guests can rate a stay across six categories: staff, facilities, cleanliness, comfort, location and value, in addition to giving an overall experience score. Partners can see their average score for each category on their property page, giving a clear read on where the property is strong and where it needs work.
Cleanliness is one of the categories most guests engage with, because it is one of the most visible, most complained-about aspects of any stay — and, unlike location, it is entirely within the host's control.
Does cleanliness feed into my overall Guest Review Score?
Not directly. Booking.com's Partner Hub is explicit that the Guest Review Score shown on a property page is guests' own rating of their overall experience, scored 1-10 and averaged over the past three years — it is not calculated from the category sub-scores. Cleanliness, staff, facilities and the rest are shown separately as diagnostic detail, not as inputs to a formula.
In practice the two move together: a guest who found the room dirty rarely gives a high overall score either, so a poor cleanliness category is almost always accompanied by a lower headline review score, even though Booking.com does not compute one directly from the other.
Does a better cleanliness score improve where I show up?
Booking.com is open that guest review performance is one of the factors behind a property's visibility and its eligibility for programmes on the platform — properties are expected to maintain a reasonable cleanliness standard to take part in some of Booking.com's quality and loyalty initiatives (see Booking.com Partner Hub, 'Using the property page score to attract more guests'). We do not publish or invent a precise ranking weighting here, because Booking.com does not disclose one — but a consistently strong cleanliness score is a low-risk, high-control lever that supports both conversion and review content.
What actually moves the cleanliness score?
Guests mark cleanliness down for the same handful of things repeatedly: a fresh, hotel-standard presentation on arrival, no odours, spotless bathrooms and kitchens, and clean linen and towels every stay. The categories most commonly cited in guest feedback are bathroom and kitchen hygiene, dust and hair, and general 'lived-in' feel from the previous guest — the same areas Airbnb guests mark down (see our Airbnb 5-star cleanliness guide), because guests judge short lets against a hotel standard regardless of platform.
Turning cleanliness into a review-score advantage
The properties with consistently strong cleanliness scores almost always share one thing: a dependable, professional changeover clean to the same standard every time, rather than a rotating cast of ad-hoc cleaners. Our serviced accommodation cleaning and Airbnb changeover cleaning services are built for exactly this — a fixed turnaround standard, linen and restocking handled, so cleanliness stops being a variable in your review score.
Booking.com's six guest review categories
| Category | What guests are rating |
|---|---|
| Staff | How helpful and welcoming staff or the host were |
| Facilities | Amenities and equipment provided |
| Cleanliness | How clean the room or property was on arrival and throughout |
| Comfort | How comfortable the stay felt overall |
| Location | Convenience and setting of the property |
| Value | Value for money relative to price paid |