Will Guests Recommend Your Hotel?

Anyone availing of goods or services these days will have heard the following question: How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?.  Most customers will have provided a number from 0-10 with hardly a thought, and yet this particular question is one that many businesses are using to collect some real customer insight. While most people will be familiar with the question, far fewer will have heard of NPS® or Net Promoter Score. NPS is an industry standard for measuring customer loyalty. It differs from other metrics because it doesn’t measure a customers satisfaction with respect to a specific event or a single customer service interaction, but is designed to measure the overall loyalty of their customers to a brand.

The score that the guest provides in the survey can be broken down into the following categories:

  • Detractors: they give a score between 0 – 6, identify as an unhappy customer, probably won’t return and are likely to convince their friends not to return either. 
  • Passive: They score between 7 and 8. They are considered satisfied but are not passionate about the brand.
  • Promoters: score either 9 or 10. They are loyal and enthusiastic about the brand. They will almost certainly return and will refer others to the brand.

Once a hotel has their scores they can follow the below formula to obtain their final result:

NPS Score= % of Promoters-% of Detractors

The result of this formula can vary between -100 and 100. But what do these results mean? A positive result indicates that there is a greater number of guests that recommend your hotel and obviously a negative result indicates the opposite.

Why is NPS important for your Hotel?

This measure is an indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty and helps determine the likelihood of a guest return. Knowing whether your customers are satisfied or not with the brand will help a hotelier to see how they can improve the hotel experience for their guests. Providing a survey that also has an open question for the client to express the reason for their score, gives the hotelier an opportunity to know first-hand their guest comments, opinions and suggestions and to take action to improve the areas that require it.

How to improve and maintain High NPS Scores?

  • Set an NPS goal and put aside the time to achieve it; also share these goals with your staff so they will feel part of the project.
  • Conduct surveys and respond to reviews, even the good ones.
  • It is recommended to keep the number of questions from your surveys to the minimum; between 1 and 5 questions is enough. Give the guest the opportunity to explain the “why” in case of a bad experience.
  • Personnel selection and training: if your staff is committed and qualified for the work they perform, the client’s experience will be more pleasant.
  • Interact with your guests, pre-arrival, in-stay and post-stay. The guest must be the priority of you and your staff all the time, not only during the time of their stay but before (what are their preferences for the time of arrival? what other services do you provide? What are the advantages of having chosen you?) and after (It is important for them to know that you care about them, not only because of their money but because of their thoughts and impressions of your facilities and service).
  • Aim to offer not just a good service but an entire experience for your guest. Remember that customer service should be your main goal. When a guest has a bad experience but feels that the staff were concerned and resolved to improve it, they are more willing to overlook the situation.