Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need

What's inside?

A detailed guide in helping you understand the guest feedback and surveys for hotels. This includes the various types, their pros and cons, and how you can implement the right strategy and systems that can help proactively learn and skyrocket your business growth.

“Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation – rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.”

But is it that easy to hear from your guests? Well...

Only one out of every 26 customers is likely to bring up their complaints. The other 25 customers will simply take their business elsewhere without a word. This means that it is important that you let a customer know they have a voice and that you will listen.

Consequently, feedback, no matter good or bad, big or small, is important in every sphere and every domain.

It might seem like a cliche when someone says, “Go, ask for it. Asking helps!” But this etiquette has been continuing since time immemorial and applies equally to the idea of hoteliers asking for feedback from their guests concerning their likes, dislikes, convenience, and the various improvements that they would want to see in a property.

It is adding the word “direct” before feedback makes all the difference. While mediums like online reviews, surveys, questionnaires, etc. can help to a great extent in this fast-paced world for obtaining the guests’ feedback, one should also not overlook the importance of customer feedback in its raw, ‘direct’ form. So, having a proper guest feedback strategy for hotels is the need of the hour!

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So, What’s the Difference Between Hotel Guest Feedback and Online Reviews?

A lot of times, we tend to use guest feedback and online reviews in the same vein. Although the interchangeable usage of these two terms is not entirely a wrong practice, there is still some difference between the two.

In simple words, reviews are a form of guest feedback. Both entail hearing from your guests and getting their insights on which to prepare your future course of action.

Over time “guest feedback” has come to be bifurcated into varieties of which reviews have acquired a distinct flavor of their own. The feedback that has been collected at various points in the guests’ journey, no matter through what means, can actually lead the hotels to encourage someone to write a review online.

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Online Guest Reviews For Hotels:

• Publicly available so they can create social proof
• Increase travelers’ trust and confidence while searching where to book
• The best ‘advertising’ to continuously fuel sales and drive business growth

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Guest Feedback/Surveys:

• Proactively learn at the right time, before guests’ experience becomes public and does any damage online.
• Control the overall flow of the relationship
• Collect both qualitative and quantitative data for your business growth
• Keep feedback and findings private

As you can see, both of these are incredibly significant to drive business growth and form the base on which the guest feedback strategy for hotels can grow

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So which one is needed for your property?

The answer is both.

Creating a system that makes it easier for your guests to share their feedback internally helps you capture guest sentiments at the right time while promoting more online reviews- this can be incredibly good for your business as it allows you to learn directly from your guests proactively while making it easier for customers to leave online review for your brand, which in turn can help attract bookings.

An example of hotel guests' complaints and resolutions depicting a mid-stay hotel guest feedback sample

Let’s Dive into Guest Feedback

No man, machine, company, organization, or property can conduct their operations smoothly without hearing back or getting input from their customers. After all, what one is doing needs to be reviewed by the one for whom it is being done- the customers.

Likewise, for a property guest feedback is vital to know how it is doing overall, what aspects of service need improvement, and whether or not the travelers’ expectations are being met or exceeded.

Coming to the direct guest feedback strategy for hotels, one thing that is the most essential is timing. By this, we mean the timing at which you are expected to offer a survey or feedback form to your guests.

While, a survey form can also be given to ascertain the first-ever physical experience of your guests with you- the check-in, even then the timing matters and so does the mood and state of mind of your guests. For instance, thrusting a feedback form at an agitated guest before they had their much-needed hot shower after a tedious trip is not going to bring you any useful results.

This brings us to:

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The A.C.A.F Guest Feedback Loop- A Strategic System

• Ask for customer feedback proactively
• Categorize the feedback to gain a contextual understanding that is meaningful for your property
• Act on the feedback (if needed) to implement changes to drive excellence
• Follow-up with guests who shared feedback with proactive responses

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Guest Feedback: Past Vs. Present Scenarios

In the past, a lot of ‘pen and paper' approach was in vogue, with guests giving their input on feedback forms and comment cards, either left on the reception desk or in their rooms to be filled.

But fast-forward to the present, and you will see a lot of digital methods and means that modern travelers are resorting to review their hotel stay like online surveys, questionnaires, quick links, etc.

These have become the essential backbone of the guest feedback strategy for hotels.

The shift is because the past methods are a little worn out now and have their limitations.

But they are still used as preferred means of collecting feedback by the hotels. On the other hand, with technology and digitization, it can be easier for the guests and faster for the hoteliers to collect feedback, easier to categorize data, analyze trends, and quicker to make changes.

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Getting Guest Feedback: Types (Traditional & Modern)

Based on its types, guest feedback can be the following:

a. Surveys (NPS, CSAT)
b. Open-ended questions (through comment cards, feedback forms, verbal communication)
c. Specific Questionnaires

a. Online Surveys: 

Guests can be encouraged to take up online hotel guest surveys that help trace both the collective and individual opinions of the guests regarding the property and the quality of stay. 

Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and advanced technology, most brands are trying to know their guests as much as possible and to know what’s trending, what’s popular, what’s notorious, and what improvements are to be made. Thanks to the advent of these hotel guest satisfaction survey to know your guests and their expectations closely!

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b. Open-ended questions:

‍ Comment cards, feedback forms, verbal questions have been offered to the hotel guests from time-to-time to express their opinions about their stay.

c. Questionnaires:

There is a subtle difference between a survey about hotels and a hotel questionnaire. A customer satisfaction questionnaire for hotels is a set of questions usually with an answer choice which might be later on used to conduct a survey. For instance, if a hotel wants to know the quality of staff service rendered, they might just be giving you the following options to choose from:

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Hotel customer questionnaire example | Source: Examples.com

Technology has made things easier, and while there are a lot of novel methods today for collecting guest feedback, traditional methods are still in use and help trace the lineage and development of guest feedback strategies for hotels better.

In this discussion, we’ll be looking at both the traditional and modern methods of guest feedback systems in hotels to collect suggestions, both of which, to some extent, strive to indulge the guests in a way that is “direct.” It appears that the traditional and modern types mostly remain the same, with the only difference being the use of the medium for collecting feedback.

Earlier comment cards, feedback forms, etc. were used to get the responses and feedback. Even though these are not completely off the board today, mediums have developed over the years, helping the properties to stay ahead in the game of guest feedback collection.
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Let us look at these methods in brief:

Traditional Methods of Collecting the Guest Feedback

These are more reliant on the “pen and paper” aspect:

1. Comment cards
2. Feedback forms
3. Staff notes

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1. Comment Cards

As noted earlier, hotel guest comment card could be left at the reception desk or in the rooms. It can be placed anywhere in the property for maximum collection of feedback and has long been a mainstay of the hotel industry to boost the guest feedback strategy for hotels

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Pros

○ A hotel feedback card is extremely user-friendly, highly recognizable, acting almost as a veteran in feedback collection.
○ Since it’s in writing, one is less likely to forget about compliments or complaints

Cons

○ A guest comment card for hotel can be time-consuming and restrict the guests from expressing themselves fully due to the lack of space.
○ Might not provide honest answers due to a certain bias and mostly because the guests are always in a hurry to leave without wasting much time on thinking about each answer.
○ Could be easily avoided or overlooked 
○ Most people resort to the comment cards only if their stay experience is on the extreme side: exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. This can skew opinions as one can’t find a middle ground.
○ In the age of Customer-Relationship Management Programs and technology, this might come across as a pre-digital era leftover.
○ Might give rise to the problem of illegible or unreadable handwriting due to the guest being in a rush to leave.
○ Since it gives no data and insights into a guest experience, it is quite difficult to trace a certain pattern of behavior.

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Boosting the Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels

2. Feedback Form

Just like comment cards, the hotel guest feedback form can be different for different hotels based on what they offer.

It includes a few generic questions like name, date of birth, room number, and email address, and asks about the stay experience. Again, a hotel guest comment form comes with ratings wherein various aspects of the property (staff service, cleanliness & hygiene, concierge service quality, room service quality, etc.) are to be rated by the guests based on their experience.

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Pros

○ User-friendly, widely used, and inexpensive
○ Provides an opportunity to engage and interact with both the new and repeat visitors.

Cons

○ Guest feedback form for hotel can be time-consuming and mundane.
○ Guess what? Some guests might even reject the offer of filling it in the first place.

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3. Asking In Person/ Staff Notes

While this might be an age-old tradition, let us consider this as a “hybrid.” If looked at it more closely, among all the forms of attaining direct guest feedback, this one tops the list. Asking helps! How? Let us go through the example below:

Thus, asking a hotel feedback question and taking notes by employing your personnel can help bridge the gap between your perception of the hotel as well as the guests'.

Your property will always appear to be a “rockstar” if looked at from your perspective. But at the same time, direct guest feedback or asking helps to put things that have gone awry back on track and also aids in helping the guests get rid of certain misconceptions about your property. This is what a good guest feedback strategy for hotels is all about

96 percent of dissatisfied customers won’t complain directly to you (though they will tell 15 of their friends about their experience). Like it or not, it’s your job to seek them out.

Pros

○ Helpful in providing that personal or friendly touch.
○ Allows both sides to express their emotions and gestures.
○ Can be useful in asking short, specific questions about an individual stay.
○ Helps to engage even if it hurts because there are chances for you to prevent your guests from venting out their frustration online.

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Cons

○ Might render some guests nervous, especially if there is a person on the other side.
○ Might be a turn-off for those who don’t like communicating much.
○ Doesn’t allow the hotel to ask elaborate questions to the guests about their stay.

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Modern Types: How to Give Feedback to Hotel

There is no denying the fact that technology has made things easier to a great extent. Almost gone are the days when guests would be subtly compelled (read bothered) by the hotels to adopt that “pen and paper” approach for providing feedback. Today, features like Guest Messaging and surveys act as papers and your fingertips as pens. In other words, a reform in the feedback collection modus operandi is highly discernible. Let us take a look at how these new tools for guest feedback strategy for hotels work:

a. Guest Messaging
b. Short surveys

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a. Guest Messaging: Used by modern hoteliers around the world for collecting hotel feedback at every touchpoint in the guest journey, Guest Messaging is indeed a boon. With Guest Messaging, guest feedback is just a tap away and it can help collect feedback even at the pre-arrival and mid-stay stages. Unlike text messages, guest messaging does not overwhelm the guests and so it does not come with any obvious cons. However, care should be taken to use it with prudence!

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b. Short Surveys

• NPS: Net Promoter Score a.k.a the NPS is a type of survey for hotel guests that gives out the percentage of customers rating their likelihood to recommend your property after their experience.

Here is a typical hotel customer survey example:

“On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate us?”
“On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our property to your friends, family, and colleagues?”

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Boosting the Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels

• CSAT: Customer Satisfaction surveys can gauge your customers’ satisfaction levels utilizing a rating scale for a broader understanding of whether or not your services are meeting their expectations. It can also make use of the Sentiment Analysis Technology wherein a guest simply needs to hit the answer to the question, “How was your experience” by tapping on a happy or sad emoticon. This is usually followed by a question, especially in the case of detractors: “Tell us what went wrong”

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Pros

○ Short and sweet, requires a few taps and makes expressing oneself easier.
○ Cheaper and helps save money on postage.
○ With advanced methods, the responses are directly entered into the system, saving enough time for staff to focus on other vital aspects of the guest journey.
○ Results can be viewed in real-time for quick analysis.
○ Flexible, user-friendly, and accessible to the most target audience
○ Helps the respondents to express themselves fully without getting intimidated.

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Cons

○ Has the potential to overwhelm guests sometimes by coming across as untimely and bothersome.
○ Cannot be accessed by the technically-challenged group. This might lower the overall response rate.
○ Might pose a difficulty in reaching out to the people with no internet access
○ Might lead to identity verification issues unless some actual good tools are used.

Participants are less likely to stay fully engaged for a survey of more than 8-10 minutes than with other research methods

Typical Guest Survey,

Why Guests Don’t Like Them/What Your Guests See:

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Displayed above is a typical guest survey example

Question: What do you see, when you see this endless survey above? Do you feel like completing it, or does it put you off?

Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels:

Mediums of Collecting Guest Feedback in the Modern World:

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1. Emails

One of the most common ways of collecting guest feedback, hotels have been resorting to sending out emails post-stay making sure that their guests had a nice stay. One of the reasons behind using email is to instantly reach out to the guests, sometimes even during the stay, as they do not want the latter to leave a bad review on online platforms like TripAdvisor. Again, this approach can also aid in luring the guests to fill out the post-stay survey.

An example of an encouraging feedback email would be something like this:

“Thank you for choosing the (hotel name). We see that you are departing tomorrow and we would try our best to make sure that all your expectations are exceeded during the stay- if there’s anything that we could do to make your stay memorable, kindly let us know before your departure by contacting us on the number below. 

Our primary goal is to ensure the happiness and satisfaction of our guests and your feedback will make a whole lot of difference. We hope that you will choose us again for your next stay!”

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Pros

○ Instant way of asking for feedback and reaching out to your guests, especially while the experience is still fresh in their minds.
○ Increases the response rate of the guest survey and other marketing ventures.
○ Is more effective when personalized for each of your guests.
○ After check-in or during the stay, a well-meant email from the hotel’s side can work wonders in altering the guest’s perspective and aids in possible service recovery during the stay.

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Cons
○ Some emails might not even get delivered or hit the guests’ spam box where they wouldn’t be taken note of.

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Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels: Modern Mediums

2. Text Messages

Text messages have been used for a long, long time to keep your guests in the loop, especially when it comes to collecting their feedback.

Sending an SMS with the link asking for guest feedback and, in turn, prodding them to review you further on TripAdvisor and other online platforms was an extremely popular practice once upon a time. Guess what? It is still in use today!

Pros

○ Gets instant attention from the guests
○ Makes it easier to reach out for guest feedback collection

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Cons

○ Bears the massive potential of sometimes overwhelming and frustrating the guests with repeated messages to a great extent.

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3. Social Media Presence

In an age where almost everybody is present on social media, building up your brand on social platforms is also an easy and effective way to collect guest feedback. Imagine a guest reaching out on your Facebook page and liking a particular post or commenting on their overall stay experience. Once the comment has been received, you can send a quick feedback link to the guest by replying to that particular comment.
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Pros

○ Being used extensively, one does not have to learn anything to use social media.
○ There is a familiarity with various SM platforms.
○ Its extended reach is just undeniably incredible.

Cons

○ Being used by almost all, SM platforms are laborious to be managed without investing in useful tools
○ Feedback is open to viewing for all.
○ Difficult to have a follow-up dialog with guests, especially when it comes to addressing critical issues.
○ Negative feedback has the power to influence others and might even go viral, which, in turn, can mar the brand image.
○ Might not be accurate and can come from anyone without even staying at the property.

Importance of Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels

1. Helps Enhance and Personalize the Guest Experience in Hotels

If you think about it for a minute, the very purpose of feedback is to bridge the gap between the hotel’s perception of itself and the guest’s perception of the hotel.

Direct feedback or even one comment for hotels can allow you to know your guests better and make provisions for what they are highly likely to be receptive to in the future. For instance, if the barbecue and campfire facility provided to your guests by your hotel is a big hit and pretty popular, you can look into making it all the more exciting. These add-ons will go a long way in enhancing the overall guest experience.

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Enhancing the guest experience does not mean that you should be adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for all your guests. Identify your target audience and segregate their needs accordingly. After all, a businessman’s expectations of stay will be different from that of a family or large group.

The process for collecting direct feedback for adequate personalization starts beforehand, at the stage of booking. Asking a few important questions during this time can help personalize the stay based on guests’ requirements. Imagine if a family of two adults is traveling with their small kid; offering an extra bed to be made up will surely be an appreciated gesture.

Kara was on a business trip and looking to book a good hotel that would allow her to carry on with her work unhindered by providing the necessary facilities. The hotel asked her a few relevant questions during booking. Once she checked-into the hotel, she was given the necessary details, along with the WiFi password. Her allocated room had a work desk with a view. They also informed her about the newly started conference room and the work cafe which she can use at a certain price. They also gave out details regarding the print and fax facilities that she can avail of with help from the personnel.

2. Helps Bridge the Gap Between the Guests and Hotels

Consider yourself as the manager of a property who knows it like the back of their hand. But accept the fact that direct guest feedback is a revelation as the aspects of your property like view, cleanliness, location, etc. that you consider to be top-shelf might not actually align well with guests’ perspective. For guests, your location might even seem obscure to some.

To accept that you’re blindsided on certain things is a great way of keeping your eyes, ears and options open in order to bridge any sort of gap between you and your guests. One way of doing this is by collecting direct guest feedback.

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For example,

According to you, there might be a need to install a vending machine providing quick access to the guests. However, according to your guests, refurbished rooms might be the need of the hour. In other words, some changes might just be uncalled-for.

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3. Helps Up Your Marketing Game

Guest feedback for hoteliers brings a lot of benefits. If you can’t plunge directly into the gesture of offering extras to the guests and blaming it all ‘on the house’, grab this opportunity to upsell. For instance, if a honeymoon couple has booked a stay with you, offering them a honeymoon suite at a discounted rate with a movie night or a romantic dinner under the starlit skies as an add-on is a great way of upscaling your business.

But how does direct guest feedback come into the picture here? These sweet gestures will surely result in direct guest feedback because guests are more likely to leave feedback, especially when they are either too happy or unhappy with their stay. Resorting to whatever method, traditional or modern, at this point calculatively will help in bringing up your feedback score.

4. Helps Identify Problem Areas And Aids in Instant Damage Control With On-Site Feedback

Guests have a perspective and that is something that matters the most at the end of the day. Your newly rolled out spa facility might be a great thing for you but for the guests, this might prove to be underwhelming or something that does not interest them at all. On the contrary, having no sugar sachets in the room for their coffee might infuriate the guests like anything. This might appear to be a minor thing, like not providing sugar sachets or extra towels, but this can conveniently act as a catalyst to escalate the problem further.

Again, hotels can’t be expected to perform “perfectly” all the time. It is okay to make mistakes unknowingly as learning from these mistakes is an ever-continuing process and is all the more important. Thus, direct guest feedback can help identify the necessary problem areas and prepare the ground for future improvements.

Likewise, on-site feedback can also aid in resolving a lot of issues. For instance, if a guest complains about a weak WiFi signal, improperly functioning TV remote, no hot water supply, hotels stand a higher chance of rectifying these problems instantly.

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Importance of Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels

5. Helps Strengthen Relations With Past Or Repeat Customers

As noted already, personalization is more than a mere buzzword. It’s the reality of your hotel and the treatment meted out to your guests. Just as attracting new customers is vital, nurturing the bond and maintaining loyalty towards the past or repeat customers is equally essential. Guest feedback from the past is crucial in identifying the problem areas, making the necessary improvements, and gauging the overall performance of your property.

This helps to see things from a clear perspective and enhances your overall score. More importantly, it helps make room for enough personalization of the stay for each of your guests by collecting the necessary details, data, and information, aided by some useful tools.

How?

A guest stayed with a hotel and was asked about his overall stay during check-out by one of the staff members. While the guest responded positively to their overall experience at the property, one thing which he explicitly mentioned he didn’t like was the poor breakfast selection. The guest wanted more high-protein options for breakfast. Even though he was okay with that and wasn’t upset about it, the hotel took this seriously and the next time when the guest returned for a stay, to his utmost surprise, he witnessed an improved breakfast spread, this time with more high-protein options. He was happy to see the hotel honoring his feedback and beautifully implementing that.

Thus, there is a lot of scope for the hotel staff to observe their guests throughout their stay, like how a guest likes his/her coffee, how much is he/she fond of adventure, what he/she likes to shop, etc. Based on these details, hotels can personalize their stay and generate a lot of direct-cum-positive feedback which would eventually pave the way for positive and good reviews online.

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6 Direct Guest Feedback Can Result in Positive Reviews Online

People review your property only when “they’re in the mood.” Usually, in cases where people are either highly impressed or hugely disappointed with their stay, they take to online platforms to vent it all out. But what about the average ones? Or, what about those who don’t feel motivated enough to leave you a review? Positive or negative, review count and guest rating also matter but positive reviews would make all the more difference.

However, for this, you will be required to lure the guests or prod them enough to give you a review on TripAdvisor, Google, Expedia, Yelp, or any other online medium. So, while providing them with an exquisite and happening stay is a prerequisite, collecting the guest feedback is equally vital.

Setting the precedent, guest feedback helps motivate the guests to take to online platforms and articulate their expressions in the best way possible, without getting intimidated or nervous. In the case of negative reviews, guest feedback can help resolve situations and possibly not even allow them to get converted into negative reviews online.

If your brand or business can assure dissatisfied customers that it’s taking their issue seriously, you can prevent three in four of them from venting their frustrations online.

Not just in boosting your review count, but also in playing a vital role as a great substitute, direct feedback is significant. How? There is no doubt that online reviews can give you great insights into an individual guest’s experience at your place. However, consider the segment of your guest population that is not tech-savvy. This means that a large proportion of your guests with no technical knowledge and possibly no access to the internet will remain unheard of. This is where the direct guest feedback comes into the picture and weaves its magic to help compensate for the lack of reviews in the cases where there is no scope of getting digital feedback.

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Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotel Guests: Ways of Getting Useful Feedback From Hotel Guests

No matter what approach of collecting the guest feedback you resort to, at the end of the day, the feedback received should be useful and prove to be of some help for making informed decisions about the future. Again, monosyllables like “average,” “okay”, “subpar,” as feedback from the guests might not be of any help unless you can’t get the details out of them to pinpoint the possible problem areas. Hence one way of making this process efficient and worthwhile is by combining the power of technology to harness the best possible results.

There is nothing wrong with using comment cards and feedback forms but with the advancing technology, this now seems like a worn-out method and more so, because of its space limitations that curb the freedom of expression for the guests. Online surveys and questionnaires do have the upper hand, at least here.

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If you’re using online surveys:

• Make sure to collect the email address of the guest from the very early stages.
• Capture the right email address. Make no mistakes!
• Keep the survey short, sweet, and personalized ( at least, to some extent)
• Reminding the guests in person about taking the survey can also help to a great extent.

If you’re using questionnaires:

• Come up with questions that are short and focus mostly on the experience, for instance, how was your stay, how was your interaction with the front desk, etc. You can leave all the awry details aside for a while
• To lure guests to fill the questionnaire, an email with a catchy subject would serve as a great reminder.

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Best Stage in the Guest Journey For Collecting Feedback

One of the common questions asked by the hoteliers is “When should you ask the guests for feedback?” Usually, the answer is post-stay. While the stage of check-out is looked upon as a suitable phase for asking guest feedback and also makes sense to some extent, you cannot also overlook the accompanying factors that might just hinder your guest from taking up a survey.

For instance, a guest rushing to catch a flight is not likely to take up a survey or fill a feedback form at the check-out. In this case, you can provide them a feedback card or link reminding them to take a survey later on. Similarly, families with kids might not have the patience to sit and fill in the survey form during check-out. So, giving kids a feedback form designed especially for them with crayons can be a good idea if you really want to do it.

The possibility of collecting mid-stay feedback should not be overlooked as this helps compensate for a lot of things that might have gone awry. But all in all, post-stay is an ideal time for hearing from your guests. But remember to not stretch it for too long as the guests are less likely to respond once the stay and the related memories start getting stale.

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Things to Consider When Designing A Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels Or A Feedback System:

Typically when designing internal feedback we come with the mindset of “me-” I want to learn and improve “my business” - and we forget that it is guests who are investing their TIME to help us learn and promote: so although our tendency can be to maximize self-learning - we need to balance it and design it from the guests’ perspective.

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1. Focus on your goals:

• Getting more reviews
• Getting more reviews and learning from guests directly through internal feedback (reviews and feedback combined) from guests who may not have been fully satisfied
• Have a measurable satisfaction score and areas that you can improve upon

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2. Simplicity | your guests’ profiles (demographics): in either case, keep it simple and minimal while getting significant benefits- remember guests are investing their time to help you learn and promote your property.

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3. Incorporating the feedback holistically: during the key stages of the guest journey

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4. Avoid survey fatigue: review your guest journey and incorporate feedback at the right point.

This survey fatigue can occur in two key ways:

• Before taking the survey — overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests for feedback, customers decide not to even begin your survey. The result is a drop in response rates as fewer customers decide to give you feedback. In a hotel's case- consider the OTAs sending the guest the request for the reviews etc.

• During the survey — this happens after someone has started the survey and is usually caused by poor survey design such as including too many questions, a high proportion of open text fields, or asking the same question repeatedly. As a result, respondents can drop out midway through or lose interest and speed through, giving you inaccurate data.

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Guest Feedback Strategy For Hotels: Typical client FAQs

Q. Won’t guests receive too many requests from Expedia, Booking.com, or other sources?

A. Yes, they might. That is why it is advisable to engage with the guests at every touchpoint in a way by using the right mediums just so the feedback collection process blends in naturally with the guest journey. Guest Messaging can help ease the problem to a great extent by keeping it simple and attractively engaging for the guests. Again, it is recommended that the hotels should keep their survey short and sweet so that it does not become frustrating for the guests.

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Q. How do we prevent negative reviews?
A. Engaging with your guests at every touchpoint and understanding their journey is the prerequisite here. Hence right from the pre-booking level, understanding of the guest psychology should begin. Connect with your guests and ask all the right questions at that particular stage. It’s okay to make mistakes but leave a door or path open for you to know where the errors have cropped up for a mid-service recovery. Digitization could be a great companion along the way!

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Q. How to get feedback without jeopardizing reviews?
A. A lot of times hoteliers deliberately avoid collecting feedback from the guests thinking that this would jeopardize their review count online. But great guest feedback collection is an art and it is only by collecting it naturally during the guest journey at the right touchpoints without overwhelming them too much that the hoteliers can make this a win-win situation for themselves. To get more feedback from your hotel guests, mold your feedback collecting methods in a way that they lead your guests to review you even on the online platforms. Keep your feedback collection process simple and minimal as an elaborate process is likely to lead to an egress.

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Q. How do you ask for guest reviews?

A. At every touchpoint, you need to build a cordial relation with the guests which makes asking for feedback and reviews from them easier. Greet your guests, keep checking on them mid-stay, address their concerns and issues real quick, and do everything that you can to enhance their overall experience. This makes asking for guest reviews easier.

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Q. How do I get feedback from hotel guests?
A. Before expecting any sort of feedback from your guests on their stay, it is important to build a cordial relation with them. Try to know your guests better, right from the outset, and personalize their experience as much as you can. Imbibe that same value in your staff and team members making sure to pay attention to the guests’ expectations at every step of the journey. Asking helps! Even in the case of an extremely positive experience, you cannot always expect a guest to come to you with feedback. You should always take the first step. Distribute comment cards, share a review link (without overwhelming them, of course), check on them mid-stay, etc.
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Q. What do you do with customer feedback? What feedback means?
A. Well, guest feedback helps give the perspective of a user who has experienced your service. Based on this feedback, hotels can introduce an improvement in the required areas and enhance the overall guest experience at their properties! Thus, your hotel comments and suggestions carry a lot of weight!

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Conclusion

The world is constantly evolving and so are your guests’ expectations. In fact, the importance of guest feedback in the hospitality industry is just immense. Acting upon guest feedback comes at a later stage and is preceded by the method of the collection which if weak or unreasonable will not produce the desired results. For guests to provide you feedback, it is important to first engage with them. But there has to be a line between engaging with the guests and overwhelming them.

A perfect balance needs to be struck and one thing that can help achieve this is technology. Some sort of a hybrid model can be adopted that includes a brilliant fusion of both the traditional and modern methods to help you improve your guest feedback strategy. So, while you motivate your team enough to take care of the guests in person, let technology do its job in tandem to help you gather quality guest feedback.

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Time to Amplify Your Customer Feedback Strategy?

Hotel Guest Feedback is the key to financial success. Realizing the power and importance of collecting guest feedback, GuestTouch aids the new-age hoteliers with features that can help collect feedback on the go and at every vital touchpoint to enhance your brand name and to give you a 360° view of the guest experience at your hotel.

Our best-in-class technology and features have got you all covered! Engage your guests and get crucial feedback at every step of the guest experience journey at your property with our best-in-class tools!

So, no more sweating over how to get more guest feedback, collect better online reviews and bookings consistently. Try GuestTouch today.