Are management companies eliminating guest pain points?

NATIONAL REPORT – A pain point is reportedly turning into a strength, according to the J.D. Power 2023 North America Third-Party Hotel Management Guest Satisfaction Benchmark, which suggests guest satisfaction is increasing for quality of guest room and staff service.

“Despite continuing labor shortages, this is a testament to the efforts of the industry to ramp up hiring and training during the past several months,” said Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power. “Interactions with staff is one of the most important components of a hotel stay and guests are noticing that they are getting better service.”

Following are additional key findings of the 2023 benchmark:

• Anticipation is everything: The most important key performance indicator when it comes to guest interactions with hotel staff is anticipation of guest needs. Across all third-party hotel management companies evaluated, hotel staff met that goal in 82% of guest interactions.
• Work still to be done on hotel lobbies/common areas: Hotel guests are looking for modern and unique design when it comes to hotel lobbies and common areas. Currently, just 13% of branded hotels evaluated are meeting these criteria.
• EV charging is emerging as an important feature: While the most important technology features of a hotel are good quality Wi-Fi and plenty of USB ports for charging devices, availability of EV charging stations is also starting to influence hotel selection and satisfaction. Overall, 19% of hotel guests say they need to have an EV charging station at their hotel but only 6% say they’ve actually used hotel-provided EV charging.

Davidson Hospitality Group and Dimension Hospitality rank highest in a tie in overall guest satisfaction, each with a score of 725. This is the second consecutive year that Davidson Hospitality Group ranks highest. HEI Hotels and Resorts (714) ranks third.