Morphology of a hotel tradition: The guest questionnaire

This paper reviews the literature on hotel guest questionnaires, also commonly known in the industry as comment cards. Considered a hotel tradition, the ubiquitous questionnaire remains the primary method employed by mainstream hotels to elicit and record guest feedback despite shortcomings in data reliability and response rates. Hence questionnaires play a key facilitation role in the collection of guest feedback (guest–hotel dyad in hotel communication). The paper traces the history of questionnaire utilization in the hotel industry, and examines evolutionary changes in terms of form and function. A typology of questionnaire genre is constructed. Used either independently or in combination with other methods, the traditional paper guest questionnaire has been complemented or even superseded by e-based variants. Obsolescence threatens the paper questionnaire as technology uptake permeates the hotel industry. This paper considers a “service innovation” by using the questionnaire as a communication tool along the hotel–guest dyad. A back-to-basics approach potentially yields a valuable and cost-efficient guest service encounter opportunity whilst mitigating questionnaire data deficiencies.