How High-Quality WiFi Boosts Hotel Booking Scores and Guest Satisfaction

How can you improve your hotel’s or tourist establishment’s Booking.com score? Naturally, there’s no magic here: only the quality of the stay experience and the services provided will influence the overall score left by guests, along with their comments. Here we share our insight on the impact of WiFi on the overall Booking.com rating.

The overall score is not an average of the different criteria

Since 2019, on Booking.com the overall score given by guests is no longer the average of the ratings attributed to different categories: cleanliness, comfort, value for money, location, staff, free WiFi, etc. It is now a separate score, so that guests can better rate their overall experience. 

Booking.com explains this choice as follows: "From now on, guests choose the score they want to give for their overall experience at your property. Several factors explain this change. First, some specific categories, like location, are not directly under your control. In addition, certain aspects, such as breakfast and noise, which are just as important to guests, are not covered by these categories." 

This is why we can see discrepancies between the overall score and the average of the categories. In the following example, for the Grand Hôtel Barrière de Dinard (a Wifirst client), the average of the 7 categories is 9.5, while the overall score is 9.2/10.

So, can a hotel afford to neglect its WiFi rating?

Of course not! Neglecting the WiFi rating means neglecting the WiFi network itself, which is simply unacceptable today for both guest and staff experience. Moreover, the most demanding, curious, or detail-oriented guests will pay attention to all the ratings. A weak WiFi score really stands out, as in the following example from an establishment in Courchevel (not a Wifirst client, to be clear!).

Even though, once again, the two scores are not mathematically correlated, there is no doubt that the overall score would be higher with a good WiFi service.

You gain 0.23 points with Wifirst

In September 2025, our teams carried out a study of 5,636 hotels in Europe, with more than 30 rooms and rated 2 stars or higher. By cross-referencing the data with the Wifirst client portfolio, we observed a very clear and unequivocal correlation between the hotel’s Booking.com WiFi score and its WiFi provider. On average, a hotel equipped by Wifirst has a WiFi rating 0.23 points higher than hotels equipped by other providers.

WiFi is now a real commercial differentiator, deserving the same level of attention as other essential hotel services (such as bedding or quality food service). The Wifirst offer helps properties stand out from competitors thanks to managed WiFi delivering quality services: secure, “home-like” WiFi for guests and multiservice WiFi that accelerates digital transformation and makes staff work easier, allowing them to focus on their core tasks.

We have been investing in the quality of our networks for more than 20 years and saying it repeatedly. But there is nothing better than neutral and tangible proof to highlight the value of our WiFi as a Service solutions.