In hospitality, guest experience is the brand. It’s the secret sauce that turns a one-time customer into a lifelong loyalist. While other hotels and restaurants compete purely on price or amenities, top performers win by crafting memorable, personalized experiences at every turn.
Consider this:
- 74% of customers say great experiences influence where they choose to stay or dine.
So how do you build a guest and customer feedback program that scales, delivers insights, and actually makes a difference?
Let our new e-guide, “The Hospitality Industry’s Blueprint to Leveling Up Guest Experience” be your roadmap.
The following blog post references the full e-guide, you can download the free e-guide, here.
Evaluate your feedback channels
If you’re just getting started or refining your current feedback strategy, make sure you’re covering the essentials across both digital and physical touchpoints.
Post-visit email surveys
Send personalized follow-up emails after a stay or visit. These structured surveys help gather feedback on specific areas like room quality, dining, cleanliness, and overall experience—providing reliable data you can act on.
Strengths: Structured surveys provide detailed, analyzable feedback across key service areas.
Opportunities: Personalize and time delivery to increase relevance and response rates.
Mobile feedback
Use your app to gather targeted feedback during the guest journey—from booking to checkout. In-app surveys, push notifications, and quick prompts can capture valuable insights while experiences are still fresh.
Strengths: Allows contextual prompts during key moments in the guest journey (e.g. post check-in, post-meal), ensuring relevance and higher engagement.
Opportunities: Limit prompts to avoid survey fatigue and target specific app behaviors (e.g. first-time user, in-app purchase) to trigger feedback at meaningful moments.
On-site feedback kiosks
Place digital kiosks in high-traffic areas like lobbies, restaurants, and lounges. These invite quick, in-the-moment feedback and can be incentivized with perks like loyalty points or discounts.
Strengths: Captures feedback from specific physical environments (e.g. spa, restaurant, lobby), allowing location-based targeting without requiring digital opt-ins.
Opportunities: Improve targeting by adapting question flows to the time of day or type of guest (e.g. business event attendees vs. leisure guests).
SMS & QR code surveys
Place QR codes at check-in counters, dining tables, or event areas—or send SMS survey links for quick, frictionless responses. This approach removes friction and fits naturally into the guest experience.
Strengths: Highly flexible distribution—lets you target guests by location (e.g. dining table, room service tray) or time (e.g. after check-in or checkout).
Opportunities: Enhance targeting by segmenting SMS sends by guest type or channel (e.g. direct booking vs. third-party) and rotating QR content based on time or location.
These foundational tools create a strong base for collecting guest and customer feedback But if you want to go from good to great…
Level it up: Advanced strategies
To truly differentiate your brand, you need to expand beyond just collecting feedback and start building a connected, always-on feedback program.
Here’s how to take your program to the next level:
Trigger feedback from business systems
Connect your CRM, booking engine, or loyalty program to automatically prompt surveys at key moments—like after a milestone stay or when a guest reaches VIP status. This makes feedback timely and deeply relevant.
Social media listening
Monitor platforms like Instagram, X, and Facebook to capture unfiltered guest sentiment. Analyse this real-time feedback using AI-powered text reveal emerging trends—and problems—before they hit your inbox.
Guest support integration
Your help desk is a goldmine of insight. Tap into support tickets, live chat transcripts, and email interactions to find recurring issues and service gaps you might miss elsewhere.
Build digital spaces—forums, Facebook groups, or branded communities—where guests can share stories, ideas, and suggestions. These “always-on” conversations are rich with insight and foster brand advocacy.
Ongoing channel optimization
The tools you use today may not serve the guests of tomorrow. Regularly review and update your feedback channels to ensure they’re intuitive, engaging, and aligned with how guests want to communicate.
Make guest experience your competitive advantage
In a competitive hospitality landscape, experiences—not just amenities—win loyalty. When you create an intentional, always-on feedback program that spans every touchpoint, you unlock a continuous loop of insight, improvement, and guest satisfaction.
From the moment a guest books to long after they check out, your ability to listen—and act—can transform casual visitors into lifelong advocates.
Ready to take your guest experience to the next level?
Download the full guide: The Hospitality Industry’s Blueprint to Leveling Up Guest Experience
You can learn more about Alchemer for Hospitality, here