Hotel guest feedback survey: the post-stay questions to ask

Public reviews tell you what a small, motivated group of guests wanted the world to know. A post-stay survey tells you what the rest of your guests thought, in their own words, while there is still time to do something about it.

This guide gives you a hotel guest feedback survey you can use today: the questions, the order, when to send it, how long to make it, and what to do once the answers come in.

What a post-stay survey is for

A guest survey has two jobs, and it helps to keep them apart.

1. Find out what to fix and what to protect. Which parts of the stay worked, which didn't, and which are drifting.
2. Catch unhappy guests before they write a public review. A guest who tells you about the cold shower in a private form, and gets a reply, often has no need to tell everyone else.

Everything else (marketing quotes, staff recognition, benchmarking) is a bonus. If a question doesn't serve one of those two jobs, cut it.

When to send it

The best time is within a few hours of checkout, and no later than the next day. The stay is fresh, the guest has their phone in hand on the way to the airport or the train, and the details are still sharp: which room, which breakfast, which person at the desk.

Why not during the stay? A mid-stay check-in ("is everything all right with your room?") is a good service habit, but it is not a survey. Guests answering during a stay are judging an experience that isn't finished, they are often answering in the lobby with staff nearby, and they haven't yet met checkout, the final bill or the parking. Keep the mid-stay message short and conversational, and save the structured questions for after they leave.

Why not a week later? By then the guest is home, back at work, and the stay has blurred into a single impression. You'll get fewer replies, and the replies you get will be vaguer: "nice hotel" rather than "the shower in 214 took five minutes to run hot".

A practical schedule for a 40-room hotel might be:

• Checkout morning: a short thank-you email or message with a link to the survey.
• Two days later: one reminder, only to guests who haven't opened it.
• No third message. If they haven't answered twice, they won't.

How long it should be

Short enough to finish on a phone in two minutes. In practice that means five to eight questions, with no more than two open text boxes that are required. Each extra question costs you some guests who give up halfway, and the ones who stay to the end are your most patient guests, not your most typical ones. Our guide to writing a feedback form people finish goes into question count and drop-off in more detail.

If you want to ask about twenty things, ask about the five that matter most this season and rotate the rest.

The questions

Here is a post-stay survey you can copy. It uses rating questions to give you something to count, and open questions to tell you why.

A few notes on why it is built this way.

Question 2 does the heavy lifting. "What made the biggest difference" is open enough that guests mention what actually mattered to them, which is often something you'd never think to ask about: the late checkout, the kettle, the noise from the bar on Fridays. Put it early, while guests still have energy to write.

Ratings for the areas you already know matter. Room, arrival and departure, and food cover most of what drives a stay. Add one for a feature that defines your property (the spa, the pool, the rooftop bar) and drop the food question if you don't serve meals.

Use conditional questions. If a guest says they didn't eat with you, skip the food rating. Simple logic like this keeps the survey short for every guest without losing detail from the ones who have something to say.

The recommend question goes near the end. It is a good single measure of loyalty, but it works best once the guest has thought through their stay. See the would you recommend us question for how to score it and its limits.

Trip purpose lets you split the results. Business guests and families notice different things. Knowing who said what turns a mixed picture into two clear ones.

Questions to avoid

• Leading questions. "How much did you enjoy our newly renovated lobby?" tells the guest what answer you want.
• Double questions. "How were the cleanliness and comfort of your room?" A guest who found it clean but uncomfortable can't answer.
• Questions you won't act on. If nobody is going to change the pillow menu, don't ask about it.
• Required personal details. Ask for a name or booking reference only if you will use it to follow up, and say so.

Optional additions

If a question earns its place, add it. Some that often do:

• "Did anything go wrong during your stay? If so, was it resolved?" This separates problems from problems that were handled, which are very different.
• "Is there anything you'd like the manager to know?" Guests sometimes save their most specific comments for a named person.
• "May we contact you about your answers?" A yes gives you permission to follow up on a poor score.

What to do with the answers

A survey that nobody reads trains guests to stop answering. Set up three habits before you send the first one.

1. Respond to low scores quickly

Decide what counts as a low score (say, 1 or 2 on the overall question) and who sees it. The duty manager should hear about it the same day, with the guest's comment, and reply personally within a day or two. Apologise for the specific thing, say what you've done about it, and don't argue. Our guide to closing the feedback loop covers the follow-up in detail.

2. Read the open answers as data

Ratings tell you that rooms scored 3.8 this month. The open answers tell you why. Group every comment into topics (breakfast, noise, check-in, cleanliness, Wi-Fi, staff) and note whether each mention is positive or negative. One comment often touches three or four topics, so tag each one.

Once comments are grouped, compare periods by share of conversation: the percentage of replies that mention a topic. If noise goes from 5% of replies to 12%, something has changed, whatever the total number of replies. The same method works for public reviews; see how to analyse TripAdvisor reviews.

3. Share a short summary every month

Once a month, write down three things: what guests loved, what got worse, and what you're changing. Share it with every department. Housekeeping should hear when guests praise the rooms, not only when they complain. A monthly customer feedback report can be one page.

Common mistakes

• Sending to every guest the same way. A guest who stayed one night for a conference and a family who stayed a week had different stays. At minimum, record the trip purpose so you can split results.
• Only looking at the average. An average of 4.2 can hide a growing group of 1s. Watch the share of low scores as well.
• Changing the questions every month. If you reword the room question in March, you can't compare March with February. Keep the core questions stable and rotate only the optional ones.
• Asking for a public review in the same message. Asking a guest who just gave you 2 out of 5 to post on a review site does nobody any favours. Ask happy guests separately, after they've answered.

Doing this with Userforms

Userforms has a survey template you can adapt in a few minutes, or you can describe the survey in a sentence and edit what it builds. Forms can be classic, step-by-step or chat-style, with logic to skip questions that don't apply and per-form views of completion and drop-off.

Every reply is read as it arrives: filed into a topic hierarchy with the tone of each mention, alongside any Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp or Trustpilot reviews you import. Journeys can send an apology to a guest who gives a low rating, thank a happy one, and alert the duty manager.

You can start for free, or compare plans on the pricing page.