Did a Hotel's Request for Survey Responses Cross a Line?

Have we, as a society, reached peak customer satisfaction survey? It’s not unexpected to be asked to submit feedback, either on an internal system or on a public-facing website like Tripadvisor, for everything from a hotel stay to a technology helpline. It isn’t hard to understand why companies ask for this, or even why they would incentivize filling them out. But there’s also a big question: at what point do efforts to get feedback go too far?

That’s a question you might ask after reading a recent article by John Ollila at Loyalty Lobby. It focuses on efforts by one hotel, Aloft Miami Brickell, to convince recent guests to fill out a survey from Bonvoy, the rewards program used by Aloft parent company Marriott. So far, that’s par for the course; it’s hard to think of a hotel company that doesn’t ask for something similar.

What’s unique about this request is the incentive the hotel dangles: 3,000 reward points. Guests will receive that if they fill out the survey — but only if they give the hotel the highest possible ratings. “[W]e will be happy to award you with 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy points for completing the survey with a top score,” the hotel stated in an email to guests. (In this case, a “top score” presumably means rating the hotel 9 or 10 in each category given.)

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This hotel’s behavior doesn’t sound terribly ethical. More to the point, this email also seems to violate Marriott’s own guidelines for customer service surveys. As Ollila points out, an internal Marriott policy specifically prohibits connecting rewards to specific responses on surveys like this.

Nevertheless, this particular hotel’s push for better reviews may have boosted their ratings already. One Mile at a Time’s Ben Schlappig noted that Aloft Miami Brickell’s “[r]eviews lately have been overwhelmingly positive.” Maybe the hotel recently had a recent upgrade in its services — or maybe guests are finding this offer too tempting to pass up.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…