A resurgence of serious investments in hotels by third-party management companies has resulted in strong satisfaction scores for guest room quality and staff service, according to the J.D. Power 2023 North America Third-Party Hotel Management Guest Satisfaction Benchmark.

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

Following are additional findings:

• 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 needs 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 WiFi 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 ranks highest. HEI Hotels and Resorts (714) ranks third.
  
  
  
• The survey was redesigned for 2023. Now in its fourth year, the benchmark evaluates guest satisfaction with branded hotels that are operated by the largest third-party management companies. It is based on six factors (in alphabetical order): communications and connectivity; food and beverage; guest room; hotel facilities; staff service; and value for price. The benchmark includes third-party hotel operators with more than 14,000 branded hotel rooms under management and is based on 3,942 guest responses for branded hotel stays from May 2022 through May 2023.