How to Embed Expedia Reviews on Your Website: A Score That Changed Scale

Expedia is the OTA in this series that changed its mind. Its guest review scoring moved to a 1 to 10 scale, and operators noticed, because a scale migration is never cosmetic: a property with years of history on the platform has reviews gathered under more than one system, and any change to how a score is computed moves scores. There is a second consequence that only shows up when you put the number on your own website, and it is the one this guide is really about. An 8 out of 10 and a 4 out of 5 are the same value and they do not read the same way. Guests used to 10-point scales treat 8 as a good stay. On a 5-star scale, 4 reads as fine, not great. Put an unlabelled Expedia score next to an unlabelled Google star rating and you have handed every visitor the chance to misread one of them.

What Changed When Expedia Moved to a 1-10 Scale?

Expedia adopted a 1 to 10 guest review scale, and the reaction among property operators was immediate. The concern was not the scale itself but the sensitivity of the thing being changed: review scores drive placement and conversion, and operators have watched small methodology changes move their numbers before.

The specific worry was deflation. When a scoring system is replaced, properties do not simply keep their old standing expressed in new units. Guest behaviour shifts with the scale, the distribution of answers changes, and a property that sat comfortably near the top of a 5-point system can find itself mid-table on a 10-point one, without anything about the property having changed.

For your website, the practical implication is not to panic about the number but to be careful about what you claim with it. If you carry a historical score in marketing copy somewhere on your site, check that it still matches the live listing. Static claims made under one scoring system and left in place through a migration are how a property ends up advertising a score it no longer has.

Why Does an 8 Out of 10 Read Worse Than It Is?

Because scale conventions carry cultural weight that the arithmetic does not. Guests accustomed to 10-point systems, which are the norm across much of Europe, generally read an 8 as a genuinely good stay. Convert that same value to a 5-star scale and it becomes a 4, which most readers file as acceptable rather than excellent, because on star systems the meaningful range has compressed into the top fifth.

That asymmetry is a real problem on a page that shows both. A property with an 8.4 on Expedia and 4.5 stars on Google is being described consistently by two systems, and a visitor skimming will very likely conclude that the Google reviewers liked it more. Nothing in the data says that.

The fix is not to normalise. It is to label. Show 8.4 out of 10 on Expedia and 4.5 out of 5 on Google, and the visitor stops comparing digits and starts reading two clearly separate assessments. This costs a few characters of copy and removes the entire failure mode.

Should You Convert the Score to Stars for Consistency?

No, and the temptation is strongest here precisely because the design problem is most visible. A row of matching star ratings looks tidier than a row of mismatched formats, and every design review will ask for it.

Converting produces a number that exists nowhere. A visitor who clicks through to your Expedia listing to check will find a different-looking figure than the one your site showed, and the fact that it is arithmetically equivalent will not help, because they are not doing arithmetic. They are checking whether your website told them the truth.

If the mismatch genuinely bothers you, give each platform its own block with its own label and scale rather than forcing them into one comparison row. Visual consistency is achievable through layout, typography and spacing without touching the numbers, and that is where it should come from.

How Does Expedia's Brand Family Affect Your Listing?

Expedia sits inside a group that also includes Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz and Travelocity. A property working with Expedia therefore has a presence across several consumer-facing brands rather than one, which is a large part of the platform's distribution argument.

For your own website this matters mainly as a reason to be precise about attribution. Cite the specific brand whose reviews you are displaying rather than referring vaguely to the group, and link to that listing. A guest who wants to verify a review should land on the page it came from, not on a corporate family tree.

It is also a reason not to stack every brand in the family as a separate proof badge on your site. Whether or not the review pools overlap, a row of logos from one corporate group reads to a careful visitor as one relationship presented several times, which is the same credibility problem that a row of Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice badges creates for a software vendor.

What Is Method 1: Copying Reviews Manually?

Copying a handful of Expedia guest reviews into your site as static testimonials is quick and free, and for a small property with a simple site it is a reasonable place to start.

The scale migration makes it riskier here than on most platforms. A static block quoting a score captured under the previous system will quietly misstate your standing, and unlike a widget it will not correct itself. If you already have hand-written Expedia claims anywhere on your site, that is worth checking today regardless of what you do next.

If you keep the manual approach, quote the guest text and leave the numeric claim to a live widget or to nothing at all. Text ages honestly. Numbers do not.

What Is Method 2: A Review Widget Tool?

Expedia publishes no first-party reviews widget for arbitrary websites, so a third-party widget tool is the route. With BlooTrue you paste your Expedia property URL, preview your real reviews and score, choose from 100+ layout styles across slider, marquee, grid, list, masonry and badge, style it to your site, then copy one line of HTML.

The widget header shows your real Expedia score rather than a figure computed from the cards on display, which is what keeps the page correct through any future methodology change. That is the strongest practical argument for a widget over hand-copied text on this platform specifically: the number maintains itself.

The embed is a single snippet, so it drops into WordPress via a Custom HTML block, Squarespace via a Code block, Wix via the HTML iframe element, Webflow via an Embed element and Framer via an Embed component, plus any booking engine that accepts custom HTML around the reservation form.

Where Should Expedia Reviews Go?

Beside your own booking form. The commercial reason to display OTA reviews on your own site is to win the direct booking, and every direct booking saves the commission that made the OTA relationship expensive in the first place.

A guest who has reached your website has usually already seen you on Expedia and is checking whether booking direct is safe. Showing the same reviews they already trust, clearly attributed and clearly labelled with the scale, transfers that trust onto your own page at the exact moment the question is being asked.

Keep a compact rating block at the decision point and leave any longer review gallery further down the page. A guest with a rate and a date picker in front of them wants reassurance, not reading.