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Best questions for hotel guest survey about staff friendliness

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Adam Sabla

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Aug 23, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for a hotel guest survey about staff friendliness, plus practical tips for designing them. If you want to build a high-impact survey in seconds, you can generate one with Specific instantly.

Best open-ended questions for Hotel Guest survey about staff friendliness

Open-ended questions invite guests to express experiences and feelings in their own words. This results in richer, more actionable insights—uncovering what guests value most or what frustrates them. They’re perfect when you want stories, ideas, or specific recommendations, not just pre-set options.

Benefits? You capture surprises and real emotions, instead of forcing guests into narrow boxes. Considering that 89% of hotel guests consider staff friendliness critical to their stay, open-ended responses help you truly understand what “friendly” means across cultures and situations. [1]

  1. Can you describe a recent interaction you had with a member of our hotel staff?

  2. What stood out most about how our staff greeted you or helped during your stay?

  3. In what ways did our staff make you feel especially welcome?

  4. Did you encounter any staff who exceeded your expectations? Please share your story.

  5. If you felt any staff member was less than friendly, what happened and how did it affect your experience?

  6. How comfortable did you feel approaching staff with questions or requests?

  7. Were there any moments when staff support made a real difference in your visit?

  8. If you could change one thing about how our staff interacts with guests, what would it be?

  9. Is there an example where staff friendliness improved or saved your experience at our hotel?

  10. What suggestions do you have for making staff interactions even more enjoyable for future guests?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for Hotel Guest survey about staff friendliness

Single-select multiple-choice questions are the way to go for quick, quantifiable data or when starting the conversation. Sometimes, guests are tired or short on time—giving them brief options makes it easier to respond. You get structured feedback that’s easy to measure, and can always add open-ended follow-ups for deeper insights.

Question: How would you rate the friendliness of our staff during your stay?

  • Very friendly

  • Somewhat friendly

  • Neutral

  • Somewhat unfriendly

  • Very unfriendly

Question: Which area of staff interaction left the biggest impression on you?

  • Reception/check-in

  • Housekeeping

  • Restaurant/bar

  • Concierge/helpdesk

  • Other

Question: How easy was it to approach staff with a problem or question?

  • Very easy

  • Somewhat easy

  • Neutral

  • Somewhat difficult

  • Very difficult

When to followup with "why?" Use a followup “why?” question after a guest chooses an option that signals strong feelings (positive or negative)—it encourages guests to elaborate. For example, if someone rates staff as “somewhat unfriendly,” immediately asking, “Why did you feel this way about our staff?” can reveal pain points you’d miss otherwise.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Add “Other” when you suspect your set options don’t capture every scenario. Follow-up questions like “Please specify the area or moment” uncover surprising insights that may otherwise be lost—and often spark service innovations.

NPS question for staff friendliness: Should you use it?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures loyalty and is a great fit here, especially in hospitality where word-of-mouth drives bookings. Asking if guests would recommend your hotel based on staff friendliness draws a direct line from employee behavior to advocacy. With 72% of guests identifying friendly service as a key satisfaction factor [2], this metric lets you benchmark how staff interactions drive brand loyalty over time.

If you want to try an NPS question tailored for staff friendliness, you can launch a ready-to-use survey with Specific—it takes less than a minute.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are the secret sauce. Asking “Can you tell me more?” after a brief or vague answer transforms ambiguous feedback into clear, actionable insight. And with AI-powered tools like Specific’s automated followups, that probing happens naturally—no manual chasing, no endless email chains.

  • Hotel guest: "I didn’t love the reception experience."

  • AI follow-up: "Could you share what made the reception experience less enjoyable for you?"

Instead of a dead end, you uncover the real reasons guests feel the way they do—whether it’s a long wait, a curt greeting, or missing information.

How many followups to ask? In most surveys, two to three follow-ups per key question are perfect. You want depth, but not fatigue. Good conversational survey platforms, like Specific, let you set this up—if the context is clear, the survey automatically moves on.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each follow-up feels like a human chat—not a form—raising engagement and response quality.

AI survey response analysis: AI tools break down and analyze sprawling feedback in seconds. You can learn how to analyze open-text survey data quickly, even if you collect hundreds of stories and comments.

Automated AI follow-ups are a new way to survey—try generating one with Specific to experience it first-hand.

How to prompt ChatGPT (or other GPTs) for staff friendliness survey questions

If you want to brainstorm on your own, ChatGPT or similar AI tools can be a huge help. Here’s how I’d start:

Start simple for inspiration—

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Hotel Guest survey about staff friendliness.

But the real magic comes when you add more detail. Tell the AI your goal, the type of guests, the brand standard, or key concerns—

We want to understand what makes guests feel truly welcome, with a focus on international travelers. Suggest open-ended questions for a hotel guest survey about staff friendliness that address cultural differences in communication and service expectations.

Once you have your first question set, get organized—

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Review the categories. Find one that matches your main goal (like "Areas for improvement") and ask—

Generate 10 questions for staff friendliness, focused on areas for improvement and guest suggestions.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys use AI to conduct interviews via chat, making them interactive and human-like—very different from standard forms. Instead of ticking boxes or typing into static fields, guests feel heard and engaged, which boosts response rates and candor.

Here’s how AI survey generators compare to manual survey tools:

Manual Surveys

AI-Generated Surveys

Time-consuming to build

Instant creation from a natural-language prompt

Rigid question order

Adaptive follow-up logic

No automatic probing

Dynamic, expert-like followups

Hard to analyze free-text

AI summaries and interactive analysis

Why use AI for hotel guest surveys? AI captures the context behind each answer, reacts in real time to dig deeper, and summarizes all the insights afterward. This is especially critical when staff friendliness is subjective and stories matter as much as scores. The difference is clear: AI survey examples lead to sharper insights—and less work for your team.

Specific delivers a seamless conversational survey experience, making it easy to create, iterate, and act on feedback. If you want step-by-step help, check our guide to building a hotel guest survey about staff friendliness in minutes.

See this staff friendliness survey example now

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Sources

  1. Gitnux. Customer Experience in the Hotel Industry Statistics

  2. Gitnux. Customer Experience in the Hotel Industry Statistics

  3. WiFiTalents. Customer Experience in the Hospitality Industry Statistics

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.