Methodology
How Kanchen AI ranks homestays.
Star ratings flatten a stay into a single digit. Kanchen AI reads the reviews themselves — up to 500 per property, across every property we track — the way a discerning traveler would: noticing what is praised, what is complained about, and what is left unsaid. It does this at scale every week, across English, Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and more, and turns messy, subjective, multilingual prose into structured, comparable scores on the five pillars that actually predict how a stay will feel.
The five pillars
Every property is scored on Shelter, Water, Hearth, Path, and View. These were distilled from thousands of guest reviews of hill homestays - the dimensions guests actually complained about, praised, or built entire trip decisions around.
- Shelter - rooms, cleanliness, warmth, upkeep.
- Water - hot water reliability, supply, plumbing.
- Hearth - food, hospitality, the warmth of the hosts.
- Path - road access, last-mile, arriving with luggage.
- View - what you actually see from your window at first light.
A 24-month rolling review window
Kanchen AI analyzes every guest review from the last 24 months for each homestay we track, up to 500 per property, in any language - English, Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and more. Older reviews are archived and excluded from scoring.
This is deliberate. Ownership and management in Darjeeling and Kalimpong shift faster than review sites forget - a homestay that was excellent in 2020 may be under new hands in 2025. A 5-year-old glowing review can actively mislead. The 24-month window keeps the score honest to how the place actually runs today.
Confidence tiers
Every score comes with a confidence tier - shown as a chip on every property card so you know at a glance how much signal is behind the number:
- Deep review - 20+ recent reviews analyzed. Highest confidence.
- Limited reviews - 5 to 19 recent reviews. Moderate confidence.
- Summary only - too few reviews to fetch deeper history; scored from Google's own AI summary. Lower confidence, treat with caution.
- Stale signal - property has reviews on Google but none in the last 24 months. Shown as a separate badge; often a warning sign in itself.
In our default ranking, Deep-review homestays are listed above Limited, and Limited above Summary. Scores are then sorted within each tier - so you never see a lower-confidence score outrank a higher-confidence one just because the number is a touch larger.
What we do not do
- Money never moves a rank. We may work with homestays commercially — for example, helping them build a website or improve their presence — but no payment, partnership, ad, or placement can buy a better position. Rank is earned only from guest reviews, and the algorithm cannot see who has paid us.
- We do not scrape review text into user-facing pages beyond what Google itself shows.
- We do not pretend to have data we do not have. If a property has 4 reviews, we say "Low confidence" instead of manufacturing a decisive-looking score.
Corrections
If you run a homestay that is missing from Kanchen, if your listing details need correction, or if you think our score misreads your place, write to us. We review owner corrections and refresh scores continuously.