The findings of the study demonstrate how the hospitality landscape has evolved over the past year, highlighting important trends as well as leading brands and individual hotels that are achieving exceptional levels of guest satisfaction.

For the third edition of this study, the company analyzed 2.7 million online guest reviews published during 2015, evaluating a total of 2,690 properties that pertain to 159 luxury brands worldwide.

The ranking was based on ReviewPro’s Global Review Index™ (GRI™), the industry standard online reputation score, calculated from guest reviews from 175 online travel agencies (OTAs) and review sites in 45 languages.

As well as overall guest satisfaction scores (GRI™), the report also evaluated performance on other key indexes: Service, Value, Cleanliness, Rooms and Location.

Key findings:

In terms of overall online guest satisfaction, Four Seasons (GRI™ 93.2%) was the best performing Large Luxury Brand and Library Hotel Collection (GRI™ 96.1%) was the best performing Small Luxury Brand. Belmond Palacio Nazarenas and Spicers Peak Lodge were the best performing Individual Luxury Hotels, both with a GRI™ of 98.1%.

Guest satisfaction with the Top 25 Small Luxury Brands improved year-on- year with their average GRI™ increasing from 92.2% to 93.7%. The GRI™ of the Top 25 Large Luxury Brands was lower in comparison, with almost no change at 90.1%.

Luxury hotels in China received 703,041 reviews, representing a dramatic increase of +46% year-on- year and taking them into first place ahead of American hotels who experienced a decrease of 13% year-on-year.

TripAdvisor was the largest online review source for luxury hotels, generating 26% of total reviews followed closely by Booking.com with 25%. Ctrip overtook Facebook to become the third largest review source.

Luxury hotels guests were happy to share their experiences with each hotel receiving on average 1,008 reviews (versus 836 in the previous year’s study). Guest satisfaction also improved with 83% of reviews being positive, an increase from 80% the previous year.

China had the largest number of Top 100 rated luxury properties (increasing from 14 to 23 within a year), followed by Maldives (11) and United Kingdom (6).

To download the full report, click here.