Hotel & Spa Excelsior

For a questionnaire analysis I decided to analyze one used by Hotel and Spa

Excelsior. The hotel is a luxurious 5 star hotel and is one of the most

renowned landmark hotels in Dubrovnik with great tradition going all the way

back to 1913 when hotel started to operate. According to famous

newspapers “Sunday Times” Excelsior is one of the finest hotels on the

Mediterranean ; to substantiate the claim it is enough to mention some of

the famous guests who chose Excelsior over all other Dubrovnik Hotels those

guests include dignitaries like Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Elizabeth

Taylor, Richard Burton, Onassis and many others . The hotel has a great

location being just 5 minutes away from the old town, and in June 2008 it has

been completely refurbished and now it is one of the most luxurious hotels in

the Mediterranean.

The Excelsior Hotel is known for its outstanding service of the highest

quality. The hotel takes pride in its special atmosphere with its personal

touch and flawless service, many guests keep returning to our hotel enjoying

the continuously new or improved amenities and services. Besides room

accommodation, hotel also offers an extensive range of high quality health

and beauty services. Comfort Zone Space is the Spa and Beauty Centre at

Dubrovnik's hotel Excelsior; The Comfort Zone Spa is really a world class

wellness center that also offers a specially chosen palette of cosmetic

products for home care. Their mission is to offer care and pleasure to their

guests whereby Care is synonymous with attention, respect and customized

solutions and Pleasure is enjoyment and the dedication to oneself of pure

relaxation. From their mission statement it is quite obvious that the hotel is

really oriented toward offering memorable experience to their customers,

which as we learned in class is a rising trend in service industry. Researching

Excelsior services made me realize that they apply a lot of paradigms we

learned in class such as customer experience excellence. Certainly Hotel

Excelsior is one of the best hotels in Dubrovnik and one of the leading

trendsetters in this part of Europe.

Questionnaire Example

Enclosed with my analysis there is a questionnaire sample. It is a

rather lengthy and in my opinion slightly complicated questionnaire. In a

previous section I wrote of the service excellence which Hotel Excelsior

provides, but I am afraid that their questionnaire is not up to their otherwise

high standards. Of course I will explain why!

At the front page there is no questionnaire title, it only says

questionnaire and that is it, giving a questionnaire a title would give it better

credibility. However they did not do it, and certainly it would be beneficial if

they did since most people like when there is a title about something so they

can get a better idea of what this questionnaire is exactly.

The questionnaire is usually given to a customer day prior to their

departure, which is not the best time since most people leaving have other

things on their mind and don’t want to be bothered with questionnaires upon
their departure. Thus they should definitely choose another time for a guest

to fill the questionnaire. Questionnaire is mainly distributed by placing it in

guests rooms, and it is also available on reception desk.

As for the questionnaire design- the visual appeal of the questionnaire is not

excellent, I like the fact that they went with white color which is always a

safe choice, but also they might have added some pictures or other colors to

improve the look. We know that a lot of people focus strongly on visual

appeal, myself included, but this questionnaire looks rather to simple and

even slightly dull. However there is even greater flaw in the questionnaire

cover page besides its overly simplistic visual, and that flaw is the printed

text. The text is printed in some grey-gold colored letters, which I have to

say are not easily legible and noticeable. My vision is pretty good and even I

could not tell what it says just holding it feet away, so people with poor

vision or older people might have problems in just reading what this

brochure is. The front page is still fairly legible, since the font is large, but

the real issue is when a customer opens the questionnaire and tries to read

the text. The font is small, and the color contrast is low, to read the text a

person has to have good light present and probably wouldn’t be able to read

it in a light- dimmed environment. Thus, my first impression when I saw this

questionnaire was that color and font were not very appropriate, especially

for people who might have reading problems. Despite those issues, I think it

was really smart of them that on a second page prior to filling the questions

they thank the customers for staying at Excelsior and that they politely ask
for customers input so they could even further improve their services and

subsequently the customer experience. By doing this they are bettering their

chances that the guests will actually read and fill the questionnaire, since it

is always a smart move when you politely and thankfully ask someone to

help you.

Validity & Reliability and Improved Version

The actual content of the questionnaire is the most important part and

demands most attention and effort to successfully collect valid and reliable

information. Overall, Excelsior has done a pretty good job, but as always

there is still room for improvement.

The questionnaire is given in both Croatian and English version, which I

feel is sufficient since English is basically an official language in tourism

industry, and adding extra languages would make the questionnaire even

better, but there is no need for it since most guest in Excelsior are from

various countries and there is no dominant language group( Italian or

German for example) so there would have to be a language option just for

those guests. Surely in some other hotels, like hotel “Rixos’ where there is a

large number of Turkish guests, adding Turkish language option would be

beneficial but that is not necessarily the case with Excelsior.

The questionnaire starts by asking for contact information (personal

information) that could be useful for the hotel if they ever wanted to get in

touch with their guests. However the contact information is optional, so there

is privacy and anonymity option if customers do not want to share their

contact information. I think that this is a great part of the questionnaire

where hotel can gather extra information about their guests, but at the same

time guest have the option of anonymity. The questionnaire starts out with

the question that states: “How did you hear about us” , I have seen many

other questionnaires that include this particular question, and I think it was

good they put it as their first question. This question gives the hotel the

valuable information about how people found out of Excelsior, knowing this

they can know what promotional outlets to use, for example if most people

pick Internet, and none chose newspaper, the hotel might realize that they

should not spend money on newspaper ads but rather on internet promotion.

Second question asks how the quests booked their stay, I feel that this

questions might have been omitted, since the Hotel can find out this

information since they also have the documentation about how their guests

got the reservation. This question is unnecessary and removing it would

shorten the time needed to complete the questionnaire which is always

beneficial since guests always look to finish their questionnaires as rapidly as

they can. Also I would omit the next question dealing with the nature of

guests visit, which I feel might be slightly intrusive, and information gathered

might not be that essential for the hotel. Also this question might have

reliability problems, since if it was repeatedly administered to the same

group of people it might yield different responses. For example one year the

wedding couple might be arriving on a group trip, but also they might be

here for a conference at the same time, so the same people might give

different responses. Next part of the questionnaire deals with rating of the

Hotel Facilities and Services. This is an important part and it is probably the

most crucial part of the whole questionnaire. The questions ask to rate the

certain services and facilities in a hotel; rating is composed of five options

going from the best which is excellent and is denoted with 5 stars, then very

good (4 stars), average ( 3 stars), poor(2 stars) and the lowest being

unacceptable which interestingly is not denoted with same star symbols but

rather has a different denotation which is this certain particular dot. I think

this was a mistake to change the denotation for the lowest rating, and might

be an infringement on questionnaire`s validity since it does not denote all

the measurements equally, thus not being clear and logical in uses of rating

symbols. Regardless of this issue, I feel as if the rating system is well done,

with 5 options which are appropriate. Also after every question there is a

space provided for comments, which is very valuable, since certain

comments by the customers might be very insightful and helpful. The guest

is asked to rate the reception of their friendliness and helpfulness, efficiency

and availability of information, this is well composed and simple so this part

was good. Further guests are asked to rate the rooms, which is also

important for a hotel since accommodation is a foundation of their business.

The last part of this questionnaire section ask for rating of spa and wellness
center if the guests visited it, here also the question is very simple and easy

to rate. The other questionnaire asks to rate the food and beverages

services; first question in that section asks a guest to rate the room service,

food quality, menu variety and service. This is fairly good question, and

might give a good account of the overall F&B services, also there is a part for

comments as well. Further in the section there are questions that ask to rate

food quality, menu variety, service, beverage offer, and general impression

for different hotel restaurants and bars. This are well composed question

looking at five different variables that are important, however I would

exclude this part altogether and just keep the first question. Even though the

hotel might get a lot information about their particular restaurants, I feel as if

though this is just little bit to lengthy to put on a questionnaire. The next

question on the questionnaire is my favorite one, and it states : “What other

facilities or services would you like to see in our hotel?” It is very simple and

direct, and even though most people might not write down anything, the

ones that do might give a hotel a wonderful idea of how to improve or

incorporate something new. There is a big trend of utilizing customer capital,

and this question ask certainly does that, customers can be great source of

information and by asking this question hotel might even get a new idea that

could reinvent their whole service package. The chances are not great for

this, but it is always good to have fresh source of ideas, especially if they

come from your customers. Only slight remark for this question I have is that

under the lines they wrote” Please specify”, I think that was unnecessary
since customers will write whatever they have on their mind, and asking

them to specify it is not very appropriate. Next question is asking if the

guest would recommend the hotel to a friend or a business partner, I feel as

this question has a tendency to lead the guest toward saying yes and in that

way its validity is questionable, since the question should never be more

lenient toward a particular answer. I am sure that well over ninety percent of

people mark yes on this question, so there really is no need for this question

and in my opinion it should be omitted. There are two last questions in the

end asking for a customer to rate the overall impression of the hotel as well

as the impressions of travel destinations. These questions are not bad, but

again most people probably marks excellent or very good, so once again this

questions might be omitted without any important loss of information for the

hotel. After the questions there is some area for the comments, which I think

is smart to be put in the end, since upon finishing the questionnaire

customers might recall something and write it down. Also there is a part in

the end where customers should put a date and a room number, putting a

date is alright but asking for a room number might be a little bit intrusive.

In the very end there is a close-ended question asking for customer`s age

group; the only issue with this question is its answer options. There are

options of less than twenty, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50,51-60, 61,70 and above 70.

The issue is that a customer who is exactly twenty years old technically

could not be categorized, since she/he is not under twenty, nor 21. It is a

minor mistake, but still could be corrected. After filling the questionnaire on
the last page there is an instruction to leave the questionnaire in the room or

a reception, and a courteous greeting. This is a very appropriate ending,

instructing the customer what to do with the questionnaire; only slight

remark is that they could have written a Thank You in the end as well.

Overall, the questionnaire is very decent, but still there are some

mistakes and areas that can be improved. To summarize, I will note all the

improvements I think could be done to make the questionnaire even better.

Firstly, I would change the visual design of the questionnaire, definitely

there should be more contrast between white surface and printed letters, for

example I would make the questionnaire light-yellow or goldfish, but the

letters would be red, or any similar noticeable color. In this way the

questionnaire would be more eye appealing and more noticeable, also on the

front page I would put the picture of the hotel Excelsior. Another thing I

would change on the front page is that I would title the questionnaire,

instead of just calling it questionnaire, I would write down “Hotel Excelsior

experience questionnaire” by doing this questionnaire gains some credibility

and gives a customer a better introduction in the questionnaire. As for the

questionnaire content I would certainly omit the questions about booking,

nature of visit, listing all the restaurants, recommendation question, and

overall impression questions in the end. Doing this would shorten the

questionnaire, which would be a good move since this particular format is

lengthy. As I said before I would not denote the rating in the way they did,

because they chose a different symbol for the lowest rating which was not
smart, I would rather keep the same denotations for all the rating option

including the lowest one. Another part I would improve is the very ending

where they do not thank the customer for taking the questionnaire, I feel as

though you should always thank your customer for taking the time to fill out

the questionnaire. Analyzing this

questionnaire, made me realize how even the best hotels can miss some

simple rules and guidelines in making a questionnaire. Even though Excelsior

is one of the best hotels they still could make a better questionnaire, and if I

who is not an expert could find several flaws in analysis, then certainly they

could find someone who could do the same and improve the questionnaire.