Booking sites are full of deceptive marketing speak. Paste a hotel's description below, and our B.S. Detector will highlight the jargon and translate it into what you will actually experience.
Why booking copy reads like this
Almost none of the phrases above are lies. That is the point of them. A room genuinely is compact, the street outside genuinely is busy, the building genuinely is old. What the language does is pick the reading of a true fact that sounds like an amenity, and leave you to supply the flattering interpretation yourself.
This matters because it means you cannot catch it by looking for false statements. There usually are not any. You catch it by noticing which facts the description keeps approaching sideways.
The tell is what gets described instead
A listing describes what it has. When a hotel has a good room, the description is about the room: the size, the bed, what you can see out of the window. When the room is the weak part, the description slides outward to the neighbourhood, the lobby, the rooftop, the staff, the history of the building.
So read for the gap. Four paragraphs about the area and two lines about the room is not an accident of writing. Photographs work the same way: a gallery heavy on the pool, the breakfast spread and the facade, with one tight shot of a bed, is telling you the rooms are the part they would rather you formed an impression of last.
Phrases that do carry information
Some wording is worth trusting, because it is specific enough to be checkable and embarrassing to get wrong.
- A number. "22 square metres" or "450 metres from the station" is a commitment. "Spacious" and "moments away" are not.
- A named thing. A named restaurant, a named railway station, a named beach. Naming invites you to check.
- A stated exclusion. "Breakfast not included", "no lift", "third floor, stairs only". A property that volunteers an inconvenience is usually being straight with you about the rest.
- A room-category name that maps to something. If the categories differ by stated size or floor rather than by adjective, the hierarchy is real.
How to check in about two minutes
Open the map view and look at what is actually around the pin, not the distance the hotel quotes. Sort the reviews to the most recent and read a page of them, because a property that changed hands last year is effectively a different hotel. Then search the reviews for the specific words this tool flagged. If the listing says "vibrant" and four separate guests mention noise, you have your answer, and it took less time than reading the description did.
The same logic runs through every guide on this site: what a rate actually buys, and what the listing was careful not to say. The true cost comparator does the equivalent job for the price rather than the prose.