Valuable Strategies to Collect Hotel Guest Feedback
April 13, 2021|Hotel Marketing

If you had to choose, would you rather have guests who complain or those who don’t but airs out their feedback online?

Proactively asking for feedback and immediately addressing concerns is an opportunity to undo whatever negative impression a customer may have and turn it around. If things go well, you can even convert an unhappy guest into a brand ambassador who would gladly recommend your hotel to others.

What do you do to get customer feedback?

• Researchers in a study says that the best time to get feedback from your customers is ASAP. The sooner you can get it, the better. Most participants in the said study revealed that they would give feedback after checking out from a hotel to a few days later. There are also a few that say they never give feedback.

• What does this mean? It means that the longer it takes you to ask for feedback, the less likely they are to provide any feedback from the time a customer checks out. In short, ask for feedback as soon as they check out. Also, make sure that your staff knows how to press the right questions, understand concerns correctly, and provide appropriate solutions.

• Jetsetting customers and entrepreneurs who are on the go won’t have the time to answer questionnaires upon check out. Instead, you may send them a card with a survey or feedback link, which they can complete later. Traveling families with toddlers and kids can be pretty busy. An excellent way to encourage them to provide feedback is to make fun feedback forms for children. Throwing in a box of crayons would be a nice touch.

• From experience, women are more open to providing feedback than men during a hotel stay. Ladies are more likely to give feedback than men. How can this information be utilized? You may separate your client database by gender and consider prioritizing women in reaching out for feedback. This way, you have higher chances of getting valuable responses.

• However, this does not mean men on your list are to be ignored altogether. The combined opinions of ALL guests are still of the most significance.

How do you get guest feedback?

• A survey showed that most hotel guests now prefer to answer online surveys that they receive via email, but there is still a significant number who like to do the traditional survey to fill out forms at check out. There is also a handful who would prefer sending feedback via apps. To make sure all bases are covered, if you would go for the printed survey format, it is a good idea to add a QR code or a shortened URL to encourage online submission.

• Make sure that your survey questions accurately collect the information you intend to gather. Keep them short, simple, and concise. Instead of having customers write their comments and opinions, a multiple-choice set of questions is more convenient.

• Also, consider how you can make the survey possible and hassle-free at the point of check out. It may not be everyone’s favorite, but a tablet with a set of simplified questions gets better engagement and responses than lengthy questionnaires.

• It might be a good idea to provide guests with incentives to encourage them to share their feedback. However, it would be best if you were careful not to make their opinions unbiased. Small tokens or freebies might be lovely, but it shouldn’t be something that would make them feel obliged to leave only a positive review.

Important: Follow up.

See that the information obtained in your surveys is followed up on; otherwise, it does not serve its purpose.

Interestingly, customers on the opposite ends of the satisfaction spectrum are most inclined to leave feedback. The most satisfied and the least satisfied ones often leave the strongest reviews. That’s why obtaining the opinion of the middle group is just as important. The middle group reflects the norm for guests.

Remember, feedback is not only about getting suggestions and complaints. It is also about finding out what made your guests' stay remarkable and hearing about what impressed them the most. This is a good way to determine how you can stir your marketing plan to focus and emphasizing aspects that appeal to customers.

If Bezla could help your hotel's marketing plan, feel free to contact us at bezla.com or give us a call at 888-999-8086.

Bezla.com LLC

Website: https://Bezla.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bezla
Phone: +1-888-999-8086
1800 JFK Blvd Suite 300 PMB 91649
Philadelphia, PA 19103