Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys in the Age of Social Media

Webinar

What is ? • Company providing customer intelligence for hotels

• Their goal is to improve guest experience and drive revenue growth by enabling hotels to listen and respond to what customers are saying about them online.

• Review Pro key success factor is to deliver measurable results and help their clients profit from the social web through intelligent tools and metrics.

What is ?

Topics Covered

① Why guest feedback is important

② Surveys vs. online reviews: key differences

③ Analyzing guest feedback

④ Best practices in designing guest surveys

⑤ Acting on feedback

⑥ Tips of a hotel using ReviewPro

⑦ Key takeaways

Why guest feedback is important

Guest feedback helps to identify:• Guests’ needs• Hotel’s strength which can be leveraged in the hotel’s

sales and marketing communication to attract new guests• Areas of improvement to make the guests’ happy and

stay ahead of the competition

Asking for and answering guest feedback lead to guest engagement, create dialogue and build

relationship that lead to direct booking.

The Virtuous Circle of Guest FeedbackTo be as effective as possible implement systems to collect and

analyze feedback and take action.

• Collecting Guest Feedback: most common ways are through online reviews and guest surveys.

Amongst webinar participants the methods that are most used to measure guest satisfaction are: 64% always ask in person at check-out, 51% are still using printed guest comment cards, 65% use post stay online surveys85% monitoring online reviews4% do not formally measure guest satisfaction

The Virtuous Circle of Guest Feedback

• 2 of the most effective means of collecting guest feedback:

Both type of feedback are important: when you track online reviews and guest survey you get a 360° view of total guest

satisfaction.

Surveys vs. online reviews: key differences

Online Reviews Guest Surveys

• Unsolicited, • Free-flow, • Unverified (some sites do not

ensure audience has stayed in the hotel),

• Written for travelers (which influences traveler’s purchasing decision).

• Solicited, • Structured, • Private (the hotel may fix the

problem prior to posting the review),

• Written for the hotel (what they liked and disliked).

Analyzing guest feedback• Managing Online Reviews – Case studies, reports, guides

and webinars on ReviewPro

• Managing Guest Surveys – Using “The Ultimate Question 2.0” on how to drive customer satisfaction

• Assessing 3 main indicators:• Satisfaction across review sites, • Guest satisfaction stay wise, • And the Net Promoter Score.

• Be clear of your goals: why are you doing this survey?• Identifying issues, building volume on review channels, planning on changes

in the hotel, special segmentation? Design your survey accordingly with:

Questions giving actionable insightsLimited and straight to the point questions to avoid boredom

Best practices in designing guest surveys

Surveys should look good across all devices

① Focus on key areas of the guest experience and according to the answer ask follow-up questions:

② Ask the guest whether they used facilities before asking questions & use filters to show or hide questions according to hotel facilities/guest profile:

Best practices in designing guest surveys (1)

③ After completing survey, direct guests to review channels via links.

④ Partnering with TripAdvisor to embed review form in your survey. It allows the hotel to gather valuable direct feedback & build review volume on TripAdvisor.

Best practices in designing guest surveys (2)

« If a property can increase its review score by 1 point (on a 5 point scale) on OTA channels, it could increase its prices by about 11.2% and still maintain the same

occupancy rates » – Cornel University

Acting on feedback• Use surveys to understand guest segments: MICE Surveys (guests and

organizerts), Surveys for different segments (Loyalty members, SPA users, etc.) Allows to drill down & understand what’s going wrong in specific area of service.

• Identify patterns and find ways to positively interact with staff members to encourage or correct behaviors.

• Responding to Guest Survey – Important to build trust, relationship & direct bookings. Answer should contain the following:1 Thank the guest

2 Acknowledge positive aspects (if the guest mentioned positive aspects to his/her stay)

3 Apologize and say how you are following up

4 Invite back for future arrangements and show the importance of the guest’s feedback (have the GM write the email).

Tips of a Hotel GM using ReviewPro

1. Avoid paper feedback cards The information is less effective and discourages online survey.

2. Identify what is most important to your business & focus on these questions.

Short surveys get higher completion rates.

3. Allow customers to tell you about their stay as opposed to rating lots of questions.

4. Train managers to respond so that all feedback and correspondence is collated in one site for both ORM and GSS.

Key Takeaways

① Guest surveys are more important than ever

② Set up a system to collect, analyze and act on feedback

③ Design short, relevant surveys to maximize completion

④ Drill down on areas important to your hotel

⑤ Ask open-ended questions, follow-up questions, and allow freeform responses

⑥ Use guest surveys to increase online review volume

⑦ Involve all staff to create a virtuous circle of guest feedback and improvements

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