UK Hospitality Review Distribution, September 2026: star ratings and review concentration across 5,015 venues

This dataset describes how customer reviews and star ratings are distributed across 5,015 published UK hospitality and personal-care venues, covering 2,659,043 graded reviews in 60 towns and cities, collected between May and September 2026. It contains aggregates only. Every row is a city-level or category-level summary with a minimum group size of 30 venues (cities) or 50 venues (categories). No individual business records, review texts, names, addresses or photographs are included. Three findings the data supports: five-star reviews account for 70.0% of all graded reviews and only 7.4% of venues rate below 4.0, so star ratings barely discriminate between venues; the busiest 10% of venues hold 46.8% of all reviews, rising to 56.3% in Croydon and 53.6% in London; and the one-star share varies from 3.2% for Italian restaurants to 14.1% for fast-food restaurants, a spread the star ratings themselves do not reveal. Fields whose coverage varies between collection batches — opening hours, website presence, menu URLs, verification flags — are deliberately excluded, since figures derived from them would describe the collection method rather than the venues. Source data collected for the public directory at https://businessesmap.com. Method note and field definitions are included in the deposit.