Sending a survey after someone stays at your hotel or bed and breakfast is a fairly commonplace marketing tool.

If you aren’t currently sending a guest evaluation, or if you’d like to give your survey a refresh, this article includes 10 questions for your guest evaluation.

These are questions you can use to see where you are excelling, or perhaps where you can improve your business.

Your reputation depends on what people are saying about you, and if you don’t know how they really feel, you have nothing on which to base your improvements. (tweet this) This is why a guest evaluation survey is so important for the hospitality field.

With many of the questions below, you can choose to offer open-ended questions as well as rating questions or closed-ended questions where users can choose more than one answer.

Consider what you really want to know before deciding on the question type.

#1: Why Did You Choose to Stay at This Hotel?

By asking this question, you get a good idea of whether it was an online search, price, word of mouth, reviews, repeat customer or something else.

Provide choices for your customers and let them check as many as they’d like because it could be multiple reasons.

#2: Tell Us About the Front Desk Staff?

These employees provide the first impression for your guests, and they set the tone for the entire stay.

Let respondents rate the front desk staff. If the response was negative, provide another question so they can say why.

#3: How was the Check-In Process?

This question lends itself to an initial closed-ended question.

You might ask respondents how satisfied they were with the check-in process with choices like: very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, dissatisfied and very dissatisfied.

Yet, you could employ conditional logic to gather more information in the form of an open-ended question.

For example, if they answered satisfied or very satisfied, you would send them to a question asking them why.

If they answered on the opposite end, you certainly want to know what happened, so you’d ask for details.

#4: Was Your Room Clean Upon Arrival?

This is a simple question and usually, a yes or no answer is just fine.

But, again, you want to employ conditional logic if survey respondents answer with a no response.

Push further to find out what wasn’t up to par. This helps you better train your housekeeping staff to meet the needs of your guests.

With regard to clean rooms, it’s worth noting that this is one of the most important items to your hotel guests when it comes to choosing accommodations.

#5: How Did the Housekeeping Staff Do During Your Stay?

With this question, you would use a rating scale.

For example, your question might look like this:

The housekeeping staff did an excellent job cleaning my room.

o Strongly agree

o Agree

o Neutral/Not sure

o Disagree

o Strongly disagree

If they answer that they disagree, move them on to another question so you can learn about the problems they encountered.

#6: Did You Use Any of the Amenities? If so, which ones?

This is an important question because you really want to know if they used your business center, swimming pool, hot tub, exercise room, restaurant, etc.

So, the best way to do this question is to provide a list of all of your amenities so they can check the boxes of all that apply.

You could follow this question up with a “Why didn’t you use X amenity,” if you want to learn how important individual ones are to your hotel guests.

#7: Was Your Bed Comfortable?

This is another important item for your hotel guests. While it might not be what makes them make the initial reservation, you can bet that it is a determining factor when they decide the following:

• Whether or not to return to your property.
• What kind of online review they’ll write.
• If they recommend you to others.

So, ask this question. Then, take a look at your results over a few months. If the answer is most often a no, then you want to work new beds into your next budget.

#8: Did You Enjoy Breakfast?

If you serve breakfast, this is an important question to ask because it’s vital to the overall impression your guests have of your property.

While this can be a yes or no question, you certainly want to follow it up with conditional logic.

The end goal is to find what they enjoyed about the breakfast. You might find no one likes oatmeal, so you can remove it from your offerings.

You also want to know what they like to ensure it stays on your menu.

#9: How was the Check-Out Process?

Just like the question you asked about the check-in process, you want to know about the check-out process.

This includes things like:

• Was your bill accurate?
• Did you check out online?
• Did you go to the front desk to check out?
• How was the front desk staff?
• Were there enough luggage racks for you?
• Did you find the parking adequate for ease of getting your bags to the car?

#10: How Likely Are You to Recommend Our Hotel to Others?

Finally, this is the ultimate question on your list. This is the meat of your guest evaluation.

Why? Because when all is said and done, you want to know if you succeeded in making your guest’s stay so wonderful that they will recommend you to others.

This question is what makes up your Net Promotor Score. It’s what lets you gauge the loyalty of your customer.

Did you go far enough to build a great relationship?

If the answer to this question is less than satisfactory, you have a problem on your hands and one that must be solved quickly.

Final Thoughts

The hospitality business is based on reputation, digital reviews and even word of mouth.

To make sure that your hotel or bed and breakfast is getting a five-star rating and reputation online, you want to know what your guests think. The best way to do this is through a guest evaluation survey.

The 10 questions included here will help you determine whether or not your property is making the grade. You will get insight on where you excel and where you can improve.

In the hospitality business, anything under a four-star rating will give your guests pause, so it pays to conduct a guest evaluation so you can make quick, positive corrections to ensure five stars show up for you each time.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free SurveyTown trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image:  Paul Bence and rawpixel.com on Unsplash