Luxury Real Estate

Courtesy of Michael McFadden of Luxury Real Estate Vacation Rentals

We've had some questions come up in the past few months about guest surveys and online reviews. Some of this was spurred on from by the negative press in the vacation rental industry earlier this year.

We've put together several questions and references for you to review when considering your guest survey policy and practice:

• Do you have a guest satisfaction survey?
• What is the purpose of it?
• Do you want the results to be public or private?
• Do you analyze the results on a consistent basis
• When do you ask them to complete the survey?
• Do you follow up with an email
• What percent of guests complete the survey?
• Can that be improved?
• Do you display your reviews online?
• How do you want your guest to feel when they fill out the survey?
• Do you want your guest to feel like they are apart of your improvement process?
• Do you contact guests if changes have been made?
• Have you visited the local 5 star hotel and reviewed their guest surveys?

Those are just a few questions that should be considered when developing or updating your guest survey practice. In addition to those questions we pulled together information from the luxury hotels 2010 J.D. Powers Survey. There are 7 key measures they base the survey on:

• Reservations
• Check-In/Check-Out
• Guest Room
• Food & Bev
• Services
• Facilities
• Costs & Fees

Does your survey have questions for each category?

Here are the results from the 2010 survey:

1. The Ritz-Carlton (award recipient)
2. Four Seasons
3. JW Marriott
4. Fairmont
5. InterContinental
6. Loews
7. W Hotels

You can see how they performed on each measure here: http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/north-america-hotel-ratings/luxury/

Other helpful links:
How to design a great survey
Recommended survey for Ritz Carlton