Review Policy

Who can leave a review

On exploremostar.com, only guests who booked a tour or transfer directly through our website can leave a first-party review. We send a unique, single-use link to your email 24 hours after the tour ends. The link is valid for 30 days.

We do this with an HMAC-signed token tied to your booking reference, your email, and the specific tour you took. Without that token, the review form rejects submissions. This means every review you see on a tour page on this site corresponds to a real, paid booking with us — never a guest who didn't take the tour, never a competitor, never an automated bot.

If you booked through GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor, Viator, or directly via WhatsApp/email, the review invite from us doesn't apply — but you can still review on the platform you booked through, and we'll see it.

How reviews are displayed

• All ratings are published. A 1-star review is published the same as a 5-star review. We do not filter by rating.
• Author identification. Your first name + last initial is shown publicly (e.g. "Helen K."). Your full surname is never displayed.
• Country is shown if you provided it.
• Email is never public. We use it only to contact you about moderation or follow-up. It is not used for marketing without separate consent.
• "Verified direct booking" badge is added to every review submitted via the post-tour invite link, because it is tied to a confirmed booking on this site.
• Operator response. When we reply to a review, the response is shown directly under it and clearly labelled "Response from Explore Mostar Adventures".

When we reject a review

We moderate every review before publishing. We reject a review only when it falls into one of the following categories:

• Spam: automated submissions, content with no relation to the tour, repeated identical text.
• Off-topic: review is about something unrelated to the tour we provided (e.g. weather complaints, hotel issues we didn't book).
• Abusive language: personal insults, slurs, threats, or harassment of staff or other guests.
• Privacy violation: reviews that publish another guest's full name, contact details, or photos without consent.
• Legal violation: defamation, copyrighted content, or content that violates BiH or EU law.

We do not reject negative reviews because they are negative. A 1-star review with substantive content about a real complaint will be published. Every rejection is logged with a reason and the moderator's identity in our internal audit log.

Reviews from other platforms

We also display reviews collected by third-party platforms — GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor, and Google Maps — alongside our first-party reviews. These appear as a separate section labelled "Reviews from booking platforms".

We do not aggregate ratings across platforms into a single combined rating. Each platform's rating and review count is shown separately, with a direct link to the source. The aggregate rating in our Schema.org structured data (used by Google Search) reflects only one source per page — never a cross-platform total.

We do not import third-party reviews as if they were our own. Each review keeps its source attribution.

Incentives, payments, and compensation

• We do not pay guests to leave reviews.
• We do not offer discounts, free tours, gifts, or any other compensation in exchange for a review.
• The post-tour review invite is sent to every guest, regardless of whether we expect a positive or negative review.
• If we ever do incentivise reviews in the future (e.g. a "leave a review, get 5% off your next booking"), we will disclose it clearly on this page and on the review form, per the Omnibus Directive.

Your rights (GDPR)

Reviews are personal data. You have the right to:

• Access the review data we hold about you
• Correct errors in your review
• Erase your review at any time (we will replace your name with "Anonymous" and the body with "[Removed at author request]" — the rating may remain in the aggregate to keep the public count honest, or you can request hard deletion)
• Withdraw consent for the email contact you used to submit the review
• Lodge a complaint with the BiH Personal Data Protection Agency (Agencija za zaštitu ličnih podataka u BiH) or your home country's data protection authority

To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected] with the review reference (visible on the published review or in your confirmation email).

Operator details

Reviews on this site are collected and moderated by the legal entity behind Explore Mostar Adventures:

Reporting a problem with a review

If you believe a review on this site is fake, defamatory, or violates your rights, contact us at [email protected] with the review reference and details. We respond within 7 days.

For incidents involving safety, illness, or guest welfare reported through a review, we have a separate incident response procedure on our Trust & Safety page: acknowledged within 4 hours, reviewed within 24 hours, resolved within 7 days.