The ‘V – Verified by Guests‘ quality mark is designed to guide tour operators, event organizers, and travelers toward hotels that consistently deliver high-quality service and a strong level of guest satisfaction.
Its objectivity and impartiality are ensured through mathematically generated average scores, based on hundreds of thousands of guest reviews from leading international platforms and booking websites.
The challenge: how can hotel service quality be measured objectively?
From time to time, institutions and media in Bulgaria discuss the quality of hotel services and the need to improve it. The challenge, however, is that improvement is difficult without a clear understanding of the current level of quality.
In the service sector, defining quality objectively has always been complex. Ratings are often shaped by personal experience and subjective expectations, as well as opinions shared within social circles—family, friends, colleagues, or online communities.
To objectively assess the quality of a hotel, it must be measured against a reference point or standard. Until now, such an index has largely been missing in the hospitality industry, with most evaluations remaining subjective.
One guest may praise the restaurant’s cuisine, while another criticizes the lack of vegetarian options. Room temperature may feel too low for one guest and perfectly comfortable for another. Mattresses, technology, and in-room controls are similarly polarizing—seen as either intuitive and modern or overly complicated.
A data-driven solution using Big Data and artificial intelligence
After four years of monitoring user ratings and online reputation across Bulgarian hotels, the HotScore Analytics team expanded its research in order to define measurable criteria for assessing both the average level of hotel service in the country and the hotels that perform above that average.
The foundation of the ‘V – Verified by Guests‘ quality mark is the HotScore™ index—a mathematically generated average score for each hotel in Bulgaria, based on guest feedback from international booking platforms and review sites.
In addition to ratings, the index accounts for factors such as hotel category and other parameters that further refine and balance the final result.
To calculate the 2025 HotScore™ indices, a team of mathematicians and software engineers at HotScore Analytics analyzed more than 500,000 guest reviews covering over 1,200 hotels in Bulgaria. All included properties meet the criteria of having three or more stars and at least 20 rooms, ensuring comparability and excluding guesthouses and holiday apartments.
“V – Verified by Guests” as an objective quality index
The results show that in 2025 the average HotScore™ for Bulgarian hotels is 70.05 points. The highest recorded score is 88.289, while the lowest is 34.90.
Based on scores above the national average, four levels of guest satisfaction were defined, corresponding to four categories of the “V – Verified by Guests” mark:
- V – Score above 70.05: Good quality; guests are satisfied
- VV – Score above 72.00: High quality; guests appreciate the hotel
- VVV – Score above 76.00: Very high quality; guests recommend the hotel
- VVV+ – Excellent quality; hotels highly valued by guests and included in the TOP 100 Best Hotels in Bulgaria ranking
“Over the years, while compiling the TOP 100 Best Hotels in Bulgaria ranking, we have received continuous inquiries from tour operators, event organizers, and advertising agencies seeking a broader and more detailed view of hotels offering high-quality service,” said Iva Georgieva, Director of HotScore Analytics.
“Many hotels outside the TOP 100 deserve attention, but until now there was no clear mechanism to highlight them. With the ‘V – Verified by Guests‘ mark, we can now direct both corporate clients and travelers to hotels that consistently earn high scores and genuine guest recommendations.”
About HotScore Analytics
HotScore Analytics is the research division of the Hotel & Tourism Investment Forum (HTIF). For four years, it has been monitoring and analyzing the online reputation of hotels in Bulgaria.
Based on this research, the HotScore™ index was developed as an objective benchmark for comparing hotel quality, using verified guest feedback from international booking and review platforms.
For the sake of transparency and objectivity, the calculation of the HotScore™ index is completely free for hotels and is not linked to juries, public voting, or any other form of subjective evaluation.
