site.btaNew Quality Mark to Distinguish Reputed Hotels

A new quality mark will distinguish hotels with a good reputation according to their guests. The news was broken in a press release on Tuesday by HotScore Analytics, the research division of the Hotel & Tourism Investment Forum, which monitors and measures the online reputation of hotels in Bulgaria.

The V – Verified by Guests mark will help tour operators, event organizers and tourists identify hotels that provide quality service and a high level of guest satisfaction. The objectivity and impartiality of the award will be guaranteed by average ratings generated by a mathematical formula based on hundreds of thousands of reviews from hotel guests on international platforms and booking websites such as Booking.com, Google, Tripadvisor, and others.

After four years of calculating consumer ratings and the online reputation of hotels in Bulgaria, the HotScore Analytics team expanded their research this year to develop criteria for determining the average standard of hotel service in the country and identifying those that exceed it.

The V – Verified by Guests quality mark is based on the HotScore Index, a mathematically generated average rating for each hotel in Bulgaria which factors in its ratings on international platforms and booking websites, along with the hotel's star rating, the number of comments, and several other parameters that fine-tune the final outcome.  

To calculate the HotScore indices for 2025, a team of mathematicians and programmers at HotScore Analytics analyzed over 500,000 ratings from over 1,200 Bulgarian hotels of three stars and more with at least 20 rooms (excluding guest houses and holiday apartments). 

The results show that the arithmetic mean rating of the HotScore indices for all Bulgarian hotels in 2025 is 70.05 points. The highest rating is 88.289 points, and the lowest is 34.90 points.

Four levels of customer satisfaction and four categories of the V – Verified by Guests mark were defined above the average rating.

V – Rating above 70.05 points: Good quality; guests are satisfied with the hotel.

VV: rating above 72.00 points: High quality; guests like the hotel.

VVV: rating above 76.00 points: Very high quality. Guests recommend the hotel.

VVV+: excellent quality: A hotel highly valued by guests, ranked among the top 100 in Bulgaria. 

For the benefit of international tourists in Bulgaria, the V – Verified by Guests mark will be written in English and will appear as a physical and digital sticker that hotels can place on their website, in the lobby, on social media and elsewhere.