How Clean is Clean?

RESEARCH WHITEPAPER

November, 2010

How Clean is Clean?

Evaluating the Relevancy of Quality Assurance Evaluations by Rick Garlick, Ph.D., Senior Director of Consulting and Strategic Implementation, Hospitality Research Group, Maritz Research

© 2011 Maritz All rights reserved

RESEARCH WHITEPAPER

November, 2010

Studies of U.S. hotel guests have shown that one of the most important qualities for choosing a hotel is that the property and room quality is predictable and reliable. U.S.travelers like to know what they are getting and don’t appreciate (negative) surprises, particularly when it comes to the cleanliness and maintenance of the physical property. Maritz studies have also shown that believing a hotel is clean and well-kept trumps price and location as the most important decision criterion for a traveler’s hotel choice. Most travelers would freely acknowledge that it wouldn’t matter if a hotel was priced lower than any competitor, or if it were located across the street from a desired destination, uncleanliness trumps all other importance values. In one Maritz study, 96% of hotel guests said they would take some kind of action if they found their room was not immaculately clean upon checking in. All hotels have some kind of quality assurance process in which evaluators visit properties and inspect rooms. Sometimes, these inspections are conducted more anonymously than in other instances in which the hotels have an opportunity for a ‘heads up’ prior to the inspection visit. The quality assurance process is critical for brands because most of the time, hotels are independently owned and operated by either individuals or management companies. Many chains have some version of a franchise model in which the quality of the hotels is not under the direct control of the corporation. If a brand is going to have consistent quality, quality assurance (QA) inspections, along with guest satisfaction surveys, are going to be important monitoring devices. There are times when a hotel performs so badly on basic quality that it besmirches the brand. In these cases, the corporation may begin a painful ‘deflagging’ process that sometimes leads to legal action. In these cases, having defensible evidence of poor quality, and its negative impact on the brand, becomes necessary. While it may seem relatively easy to identify inspection areas, creating a relevant QA tool is not as simple as it appears. Maritz studies have shown fairly small correlations between QA scores and guest satisfaction surveys in some categories. While this may be due to the fact that quality is very well-managed and doesn’t show a great deal of variability within a given chain, it may also be that the QA evaluation is not predictive of guests’ quality perceptions. In addition to the fact that QA measures aren’t always predictive of guest experiences, they often fail to provide much discrimination of specific circumstances. For example, if a room inspector finds a dime-sized carpet stain in the corner of a room, is it scored the same as a coaster sized stain in the middle of the carpet upon entry to the room? Certainly, not all stains have equal value. The size, color, and location of the stain will have a great deal of impact on how guests respond. Finally, QA inspections are usually focused on the visual aspects of the property. Maritz studies have shown that bad smells, whether caused by smoking in the room, or food left in the refrigerator, are far more impactful on guest satisfaction than almost any other cleanliness violations. Tactile sensations (e.g., a crunching feeling while walking on the carpet, stickiness on door handles) are also particularly egregious to guests, yet not typically included in QA measures.


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RESEARCH WHITEPAPER

November, 2010

The Research Process for Creating a ‘Relevant’ QA Measure While market research is often used to identify ‘utility values’ in choice-based designs to determine what features are more likely to attract customers, in this case, the research design is designed to determine what QA violations are most likely to repel customers from choosing a hotel. The first step in this process is to work with a QA inspector to create a comprehensive list of potential violations. These should include more than what may currently be on the current evaluative tool. As mentioned earlier, this should include violations that involve senses other than sight, particularly focusing on odors. The next step is to use a computer generated, forced-choice format that randomly presents pairs of violations that guests can rate, relative to their impact on hotel choice. An example is presented in Figure 1. Professional researchers construct these types of studies using partial profile designs and need not test every potential violation against every other violation. If well designed, a research survey of this nature should take about 20 minutes to complete online. The output of this design will produce utility weights that can be used to determine the relative impact of each potential violation on the likelihood to re-choose or recommend the property. This approach enables a fair and defensible calibration of QA tools to reflect the actual, rather than presumed, impact on guest perceptions of violations.

Some Observations Related to Previous Research in the Area While guests have different expectations depending on the level of property at which they stay, here are some general findings that have emerged from this type of research.

Guests expect a completely immaculate hotel. Make no mistake, the guest ‘standard‘ is a 100% clean from the time they drive up to the time they leave. Nothing less is acceptable regardless of the level of property. Guests possess a clear hierarchy of cleanliness concerns. While no violation is acceptable, some are far less ‘forgivable’ than others. The worst type of violation is any evidence that another person has occupied the room. Examples of this kind of violation include partially consumed food, hair, or debris left from a previous guest.


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RESEARCH WHITEPAPER

November, 2010

Location is most important. The real estate expression, ‘location, location, location’ is also important to how forgiving guests will be of cleanliness violations. Maritz has found the location of a violation is more important than size or magnitude of the violation. Bathroom or guestroom violations were weighted much more heavily than violations in public areas. Violations on the outside of the hotel were tolerated to a much greater extent than violations inside the hotel. Size only matters slightly. While larger stains were always slightly worse than smaller stains, the differences were not particularly meaningful. Guests often confuse maintenance with cleanliness. While scratches and dirt are quite different, hotels that have maintenance issues are often rated lower on cleanliness. This is particularly problematic for older hotels awaiting renovation.

Concluding Thoughts While hotels take great care in developing their quality inspection process, they spend surprisingly little time validating their QA assessment tool. Does it measure the things that matter most to guests? Does it reliably predict whether guests will choose to return to the hotel? Is it comprehensive or does it miss important areas? Is it calibrated to fairly score hotels based on the importance of their violations? If it were challenged in court, could it withstand scrutiny? One limitation of this type of research is that it shows the impact of the violation as a standalone, but not in combination with other violations. Needless to say, a number of small violations would have greater impact in combination than in isolation. Nonetheless, conducting this type of research can help hotels identify the guests’ hierarchy of cleanliness concerns. Certain violations can never occur lest guests leave and never come back. Although it is practically impossible to keep a property 100% free of QA violations, knowing which kinds of violations are most important can keep hoteliers more focused on making sure these are always addressed. While QA inspections are routine, it is useful to step back and evaluate the process periodically. Doing quality research can provide the kind of empirical support needed to defend evaluations against those who challenge the process, as well as provide hotels the insights they need to avoid the most severe quality.

For more information, please visit Maritz at www.maritz.com or call (877) 4 MARITZ.


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