Find out if you are wasting budget on feedback strategies that no longer hold up. Below are the top five that need to be kicked to the curb.

Find out if you are wasting budget on feedback strategies that no longer hold up. Below are the top five that need to be kicked to the curb.

1. Waiting for feedback from post-stay reviews or checkout surveys

When it comes to getting a complete view of your guest, relying on the traditional check-out survey is a thing of the past. Information collected post-stay is too late to make any difference. By collecting feedback before guests check out, staff can respond immediately to comments, requests and complaints.

2. Focusing on most frequent guest problems

Oftentimes hoteliers focus on fixing the most frequent and common problems to improve guest satisfaction. It makes sense to reduce the number of incoming complaints and work on dealing with them first. But the most frequent problems might not have the largest impact on customer loyalty. In fact, it could be extremely costly to fix with a small ROI. Instead of focusing on the problems that occur most often, find out which problems have the biggest impact on loyalty—those are the ones that ultimately affect return rates and referrals.

3. Relying on the four P’s of marketing to drive business.

Although aggressive pricing and promotions can be compelling offers, they are not a sustainable strategy. Many businesses are fixated on offering short-term promotions to get immediate results. So they lower prices to get results ASAP.  But having the lowest price in the market doesn’t guarantee you’ll take business from competitors.  Competitors with lower operating costs may be able to beat you on price alone which could force you to take further price reductions that reduce your profits.

4. Leaving decision-making for the HQ

Some hospitality managers are slow to give up their command-and-control approach. They believe the top-down direction is efficient, reduces conflict and maintains alignment with a single-company vision. But sharing information with staff is critical to leverage employees’ experience and let them react quickly to situations.

5. Dedicating company efforts to NPS score

What’s your NPS (Net Promoter Score)? This new loyalty measure has been embraced by companies across the globe as a key performance metric of their business. Indeed, the NPS is a very simple metric designed to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customers. And it’s calculated based on customers’ responses to one survey question: “Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

Don’t get stuck in the status quo. Customer feedback programs are transforming businesses. The power of new feedback platforms allow companies to quickly and accurately identify actionable issues and adapt in real time by taking immediate steps that will boost customer retention, differentiate their business and quickly grow revenue.