Shiji Q3 2026 benchmark: ratings rise, sentiment falls

By Rebecca Stone

Shiji’s Q3 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark, drawn from 11.9 million hotel reviews, found hotel reputation rising to 87.0% even as positive guest mentions fell to 69.8%. That split makes the headline score less useful than it appears.

What does the benchmark measure?

The benchmark pairs 11.9 million hotel reviews with 45.7 million guest mentions worldwide. Across those records, it measures reputation, sentiment, review-channel performance, response behavior, Net Promoter Score and regional guest-experience trends across property classes and markets.

Shiji’s Global Review Index (GRI), its headline reputation measure, gained 0.2 percentage points year over year to 87.0%. Positive mentions fell from 70.5% to 69.8%.

Global Net Promoter Score (NPS), the recommendation metric, rose from 55.74 to 56.26. The gain was slight. The sentiment decline was not.

Why do ratings and sentiment diverge?

Jessica Kurtz, Shiji’s director of pre-sales and global enablement, said: “The interesting story in this quarter’s data is not simply whether scores went up or down. It is what is happening underneath those scores.”

Shiji identifies three operating shifts beneath the divergence. Responses are faster. Review platforms are shifting. Positive language is weakening.

Room-related issues continue to generate a significant share of negative sentiment across multiple regions. Shiji does not disclose a room-issue count.

Shiji’s findings emphasize consistent service and perceived value across categories, but the benchmark contains no labor, revenue, booking conversion or margin data to price the operating change. Star rating alone remains a poor operating guide.

How fast are hotels responding?

Average global response time fell to 3.1 days in Q3 2026, down from 5.6 days in Q3 2024. Among three-, four- and five-star hotels, responses ranged from 2.9 to 3.2 days. The comparison range was 4.7 to 5.4 days in Shiji’s prior-year data.

The global response rate reached 68.1%. Nearly one in three reviews still receives no answer.

Shiji says the speed may reflect wider use of artificial intelligence-assisted tools for reputation management, although the benchmark neither establishes causation nor reports adoption levels. It does not say whether those tools replace staff.

For operators, the unanswered backlog still demands attention. Shiji provides no staffing or cost data to size that workload. Quick answers can speed service recovery. They cannot guarantee a favorable review.

Where are reviews shifting?

Shiji’s review-channel data show a redistribution with market-specific consequences, as Ctrip expands globally and across Asia while Expedia strengthens its North American position among hotel reviews.

Ctrip doubled its global share, from 3% to 6%. In Asia, Ctrip rose from 12% to 19%. In North America, Expedia increased from 41% to 45%.

Each market now carries a different concentration of reputation power. Operators should segment response work by platform instead of assuming global distribution patterns. Ctrip’s Asian gains do not describe North America. Expedia’s 45% share does.

Which markets and categories perform best?

Five-star properties still post the highest reputation scores, but three- and four-star hotels narrowed the gap, leaving category and regional NPS results to carry more of the operational story.

Three-star NPS declined to 50.89, while five-star hotels reached 62.29. Latin America produced the strongest regional NPS improvement, rising from 51.41 to 54.47 with gains across all three categories.

One outlier runs the other way. Five-star hotels in North America fell from an NPS of 57.39 to 39.85. Shiji says sample size and property mix require examination before broader conclusions. One segment cannot establish a regional trend.

Shiji ranked regions by GRI:

• Asia: 90.1%
• Africa and the Middle East: 86.5%
• Europe: 86.0%
• North America: 85.7%
• Oceania: 84.3%

The regional table adds context to the North American NPS decline. Operators should separate brand-level results from local property mix.

Why is survey participation still difficult?

Shiji found a 57.1% email open rate for post-stay surveys. The response rate was only 9.7%. Once guests started the post-stay questionnaire, 95.1% completed it, exposing the larger constraint: hotels still struggle to persuade enough guests to open and begin.

High completion cannot repair low participation. That constraint limits how representative a feedback program becomes. It does not solve sampling bias, which favors guests willing to respond.

What should operators do next?

Shiji says operators can connect review sentiment, operational feedback and channel data. Together, those systems can locate where the guest experience changes, where a property can act, and where channel-specific response management may have the greatest impact.

In practice, that means tracking room complaints by property, segmenting channel mix, and closing unanswered-review gaps. It does not mean chasing a single composite score.

Shiji’s cloud portfolio spans property management, point of sale, guest engagement, distribution, payments and data intelligence. The platform serves more than 91,000 hotels worldwide, including the largest chains.

Hoteliers are the customers for Shiji’s software modules, though the benchmark discloses neither module pricing nor specific AI adoption. The next test is operational: can hotels turn faster answers and fuller feedback into better sentiment? Ratings rose 0.2 percentage points. Positive mentions ended at 69.8%.