Hotel comment cards go paperless - Are any of you a Hilton or Marriot guest?

[Nemain]

Hi Business travellers!

I guess everyone knows the typical guest comment card that you can find on your pillow in many hotels a short time before your departure.

As you can read in the article below, Hilton & Marriot switch completely to web-based after-stay letters including obviously a questionnaire that the guest can fill out & submit.
Through this submission the data is directly fed to a database to avoid manual administration.

Is anybody of you lodging in Hilton or Marriot & got such a mail?

I would be glad to receive a screen shot of their online questionnaire - call it "indsutrial spying" if you like
- would be of great assistance as we invest a lot of efforts in our guest comment card system....

---------------------------------
Press release:

Hotel comment cards go paperless
By Keith L. Alexander, Washington Post / ehotelier.com

Hotel comment cards -- those personal remarks scribbled out by guests and dropped at the front desk -- may become a thing of the past. And customer surveys -- those questionnaires that show up within days after you check out -- also may become a victim of modern technology. Some hotels are doing away with those old-fashioned methods and are relying on e-mails from customers to gauge how their chains rate with visitors. Two of the nation's largest hotel chains, Hilton Hotels and Marriott, have moved to an e-mail version of the suggestion box. "We call them comment cards on steroids, with the added bonus of being statistically relevant,'' says Jim Hartigan, Hilton's senior vice president of customer and quality support. By the end of summer, all of Marriott's properties will eliminate paper comment cards in the rooms and stop mailing out customer surveys. In their place will be "online comment cards,'' says Marriott spokesman John Wolf. The hotels believe the switch to e-mails will ensure that all comments are recorded, giving a more accurate picture of their guests' experiences. Some customer comment cards, the hotels had discovered, would disappear when guests left them at the front desk, especially if they contained negative comments about the staff or property. "We were at the mercy of whoever is collecting the comment cards. If someone handed Susie a comment card that said Susie was rude, do you think Susie is going to hand that card in?'' Hartigan said. Hilton receives about 1.4 million mailed-in surveys a year, and the chain has saved about $1 million by shifting to e-mails. E-mail comments give the hotels a quicker sense of how customers felt about their stays; they also provide a larger sampling from the companies' many franchisees, helping corporate executives aggressively monitor how those operations are doing. Hilton has about 2,800 properties and seven brands, including Doubletree, Embassy Suites and Hampton Inn. Marriott says it switched to e-mails because the majority of its frequent guests were Internet-savvy business travelers who wanted their voices heard more quickly. Visitors who send e-mailed comments get an automatic thank-you reply from Marriott and not a personal response that deals with their views. Marriott's Wolf said the hotel makes the customer service results available to general managers each week; the comments are loaded in the hotel's computer database within a day. Previously, it took as much as a week to enter the survey information because someone had to type the results in after they arrived by traditional mail. Hilton managers, who perform regular, unannounced quality inspections of the company's properties twice a year, also use the e-mails to decide whether more visits are needed. "We can very quickly identify if we have a hotel that is delighting guests or hotels that aren't meeting guests' expectations and help fix the situation,'' Hartigan said. At the Hilton Birmingham Perimeter Park in Alabama, the property kept receiving e-mailed complaints about the maintenance staff not responding to guests' concerns. So the hotel armed its maintenance staff with business cards to leave behind in the room to alert the guest that they had been there. The card says: "We have repaired the (fill in the blank) in your room. If you need further assistance please call the hotel operator.'' Positive comments from guests rose 12 percent in the surveys during the first 90 days, Hartigan said. E-mailed complaints from several guests about weak water pressure in the showers at the Hampton Inn in Valparaiso, Ind., prompted the chain to spend $12,000 on a new pump. Several guests at New York's Marriott Marquis e-mailed their complaints about Ethernet cords missing from their rooms. Marriott responded by connecting the Internet connection cords to the wall instead of storing them in a bag in the room's closet. "We're able to find out what our guests think quicker and respond,'' Wolf said.

[jaimezepeda]

Originally Posted by Nemain

Hi Business travellers!...

Is anybody of you lodging in Hilton or Marriot & got such a mail?

I would be glad to receive a screen shot of their online questionnaire

I will be staying at a Hilton property next week. If I receive such an email I will post a follow-up.

Jaime

[ScottK]

A couple years ago I was traveling quite a bit and stayed mostly in Marriott brand hotels.
I never filled out the cards. Never.
But I did often answer emailed surveys, which often included a few bonus points in the rewards program as I remember.

[Nemain]

To: jaimezepeda
I would be glad if you do so!

Thank you very much indeed!

To: Discordian
We put the comment card in the rooms 2 nights before departure and we have a return rate of 18 up to 40% cards (compaired against total rooms departured ) per week, depending on the resort.
I do have to say though that we had a higher return rate before we added several questions - looks like the card is now too big... unfortunately our Top Management likes the new card so much that there is no way to change it, I tried already several times...

[ScottK]

Originally Posted by Nemain

To: jaimezepeda
I would be glad if you do so!

Thank you very much indeed!

To: Discordian
We put the comment card in the rooms 2 nights before departure and we have a return rate of 18 up to 40% cards (compaired against total rooms departured ) per week, depending on the resort.
I do have to say though that we had a higher return rate before we added several questions - looks like the card is now too big... unfortunately our Top Management likes the new card so much that there is no way to change it, I tried already several times...

Maybe you can point out to management that in the internet age most business travelers are more apt to fill out an emailed survey than a paper one.

Here's another case of on-line versus paper:
My father and I subscribe to Consumer Reports Magazine. I subscribe on-line, my father subscribes to the hard copy magazine. This is a magazine here in the US that tests consumer goods.
Anyway - they do an annual survey of Cars and Appliances. My Father gets a paper survey. He never fills it out. I get an on-line survey. I fill it out every year.

[Nemain]

I totally agree with you... I would have a concept to get rid of all this papers like comment cards, surveys etc...

But my Regional Quality Manager has a stubborn old fashioned mind
& I know that our top management is not ready to spend the money for the database...

Anyhow - I hope I can catch a Marriot traveller here

[ScottK]

Originally Posted by Nemain

I totally agree with you... I would have a concept to get rid of all this papers like comment cards, surveys etc...

But my Regional Quality Manager has a stubborn old fashioned mind
& I know that our top management is not ready to spend the money for the database...

Anyhow - I hope I can catch a Marriot traveller here

I still have my Marriott rewards account, used to be Silver Elite, let me see if I can dig anything up on the web site.

[Al Rosen]

I stayed at a Marriott two weeks ago and haven't received a request for a survey.