A guest experience programme for a hotel group

What is shaping hospitality

Hotels, restaurants and travel brands are judged on every stay, meal and review. Guest experience, consistency and online reputation drive bookings.

• Online reviews strongly influence bookings
• Consistency across properties builds trust
• Guests expect personalised service

A mid-scale hotel group, working in India, UAE & Saudi Arabia. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.

Organisation

A mid-scale hotel group

Sector

Hospitality

Team engaged

Market Research

Services

Quantitative research, Online surveys, Data analytics & dashboards

The group’s online ratings varied widely between hotels, but managers only saw scattered review comments and complaint emails. Head office could not tell whether problems were caused by rooms, service, food or check-in, or which hotels needed attention most urgently.

• Deliver on the brief: a guest experience programme for a hotel group.
• Understand the views, needs and behaviour of hotels.
• Understand the views, needs and behaviour of responses a month.
• Produce results that can be compared across groups and locations.
• Set up a repeatable measure the client can track over time.

The work focused on 35 hotels and 6,000 responses a month.

• hotels35
• responses a month6,000

Audiences we typically reach in hospitality

Guests and dinersCorporate travel buyersFront-line staffTravel agentsOnline reviewers

Coverage: India, UAE & Saudi Arabia. Markets: India, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

• India
• United Arab Emirates
• Saudi Arabia

A structured quantitative design, so results could be compared across groups, locations and time.

1. 1Brief
2. 2Post-stay survey
3. 3Review analysis
4. 4Hotel dashboards
5. 5Insight

We designed a short post-stay survey sent by email and WhatsApp within a day of check-out, in English and Arabic, covering booking, arrival, room, cleanliness, food, staff and value. Open comments were coded into themes, and public reviews from booking sites were analysed alongside the survey. Results appeared on dashboards for each hotel, with alerts when scores dropped.

Quantitative researchOnline surveysData analytics & dashboards

hotels

35

responses a month

6,000

• Online respondents were drawn from verified panel members who matched the screening criteria, with quotas on key profile attributes.

• The online survey was mobile-friendly and offered in respondents' languages.

• Digital fingerprinting and duplicate checks
• Attention, speed and straight-lining checks
• Review of open-ended answers
• Logic and range checks on the final data
• Work carried out under our ISO 20252 quality procedures

• Cross-tabulation by key groups and locations
• Significance testing on the differences that mattered
• Interactive dashboard for ongoing tracking

• Check-in delays at peak times and inconsistent breakfast quality were the biggest drivers of low scores, more than room condition.

Combining survey data with public reviews gave managers a complete and credible picture.

• The group introduced express check-in, revised breakfast standards and linked part of managers’ bonuses to guest scores.
• Share the findings with the teams closest to customers so they can act quickly.

What we recommended, and the client put into practice

• Online ratings improved at most hotels over the following year.

• Insight report and management presentation
• Cleaned data file and data tables
• Interactive dashboard

• Continue the routine and review results every period.
• A natural follow-on question: how is the brand positioned?