Results from BHN’s Hotel Opinion Report

The results are in for BHN’s first hotel opinion survey, covering the likes, dislikes and preferences of hotel insiders.

More than half of the survey of over 1,000 invitees (53%) indicated they live in the U.S., 25% indicated they live in Asia, 10% in Europe, with the balance spread fairly evenly around the globe.

The age of the survey respondents show a broad range, with the most common age ranges being 46-55 (33%) and 56-65 (26%). The younger group of 25 and under (3%) and senior group of 66 or older (8%) were the bookend age segments of respondents.

The Results

Location, Location, Location: What is the first consideration when choosing a hotel when traveling for personal reasons? 61% say location, 18% identified price as the second, followed closely by brand affiliation (17%), and amenities (5%).

Online?: 63% of respondents said they have used an online booking service such as Hotels.com or Expedia to purchase a hotel room for personal travel over the past year. For business travel, this number drops to 45%, no doubt due to corporate and other business relationships of the respondents.

It’s Not the Bed, It’s the WiFi: 42% of respondents noted slow WiFi as the most annoying thing in a hotel room. Coupled with a number of open-ended responses about price, difficulty, or lack of – WiFi is the winner – or is it the loser? The second most annoying thing noted in a hotel room was poor lighting (17%), followed in a cluster by slow room service, no coffee maker, mini bar prices, and no place for luggage (all 5-6%). In the open ended responses, lack of power outlets and dirty rooms led the “annoying” responses.

Miles or Points?: One of the most interesting findings came from the question about what hotel insiders prefer to collect. Is it the miles or the points? A whopping 87% think it is more important to collect airline miles, leaving a lowly 13% indicating that collecting hotel frequent stay points was their top preference.

BHN vice president, Bob Hayes said, “We see some surprising results in our first Hotel Opinion Report, mostly with the question of collecting miles versus hotel reward points and also with location being the prime consideration when a hotel insider selects a hotel for personal travel. We thought brand affiliation might be more important ... WiFi is almost always an issue in hotels, so the survey result on this was somewhat expected."

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