The ratings come from Google
We are just getting started, so we do not have a base of Fathuru guest reviews yet. Instead, every property carries its public reputation from Google Maps: its star rating and the number of reviews behind it. We do not change those numbers, and we do not hide where they come from. When you see a rating on a property or an atoll, it is built from Google data.
We weight by how many reviews back a rating
A plain average treats every property equally, which is not honest. A guesthouse rated 5.0 by two guests is not as proven as one rated 5.0 by two hundred. So an atoll's rating is a weighted average of its properties, where each property counts in proportion to how many reviews it has. The places people have actually stayed in, and reviewed, move the number the most.
In plain terms
Multiply each property's rating by its review count, add those up, and divide by the total number of reviews in the atoll. A well reviewed property pulls the atoll rating toward its own score. A barely reviewed one barely moves it.
Thin samples lean on the average
Even with review weighting, an atoll with a single property and a handful of reviews could land a perfect score and jump the queue. That is not a fair signal of a whole region. So before we trust an atoll's own rating, we gently pull it toward the average across all atolls. The more reviews an atoll has, the less it gets pulled, until its own score stands fully on its own. A few lucky reviews can no longer top the list, while a place with a long, consistent track record keeps its standing.
The quality badge adapts as the bar rises
Each card also shows the share of an atoll's stays that clear a quality bar. We start at four stars, but once an atoll has every property above four, that fact stops being useful. So the bar steps up on its own: first to four and a half stars, then to a full five. You always see the strictest cut that still tells you something, instead of a flat hundred percent.
What you see is what we sort by
The order is simple once the rating is fair: atolls are listed from the highest rating to the lowest. There is no hidden score working behind the scenes. The number printed on the card is the exact value the list is ranked by, so the ratings read cleanly from top to bottom.
A worked example
Say one atoll has a long-established cluster of guesthouses, dozens of them, holding a 4.7 across thousands of reviews. Another has three new places at a flawless 5.0, but only a dozen reviews between them. The first keeps its 4.7, because it has earned it. The second sits a little below its 5.0, pulled toward the average until more guests weigh in. As reviews accumulate, its rating climbs to match reality. Quality that holds up at scale is the strongest signal there is, and it wins.
Questions about how a rating is calculated? Reach us at hello@islandinn.mv. As we gather real Fathuru guest reviews, we will fold those in and update this page.