Customer Experience: Which Brands Are on Top?

WABAN, MA—Holiday Inn Express and Marriott deliver the best customer experience in the hotel industry, according to the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience benchmark of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Out of the 20 hospitality companies included in this year’s ratings, Holiday Inn Express and Marriott tied for the top spot. Each earned a score of 78% and came in 34th place overall out of 318 companies across 20 industries. Hampton Inn secured the third place spot with a rating of 76% and an overall rank of 51st.

Overall, the hotel industry averaged a 70% rating in the ratings and came in seventh place out of 20 industries. The average rating of the industry declined by 0.6 percentage points between 2017 and 2018, dropping from 70.2% to 69.6%.

The ratings of all hospitality companies are:

  • Holiday Inn Express: 78%
  • Marriott: 78%
  • Hampton Inn: 76%
  • Hilton: 74%
  • Courtyard By Marriott: 73%
  • Residence Inn: 73%
  • Hyatt: 72%
  • Wyndham: 71%
  • Best Western: 71%
  • Holiday Inn: 70%
  • Sheraton: 69%
  • La Quinta Inn: 68%
  • Airbnb: 67%
  • Super 8: 67%
  • Fairfield Inn: 66%
  • Crowne Plaza: 65%
  • Comfort Inn: 64%
  • Quality Inn: 62%
  • Motel 6: 57%
  • Days Inn: 56%

“Every year there’s a battle across hotel chains for the customer experience crown, but we have to give special credit to Marriott for being at or near the top since 2011,” states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.

Airbnb’s customer experience score improved the most over the previous year, gaining 11 points. Fairfield Inn’s score, on the other hand, declined the most, dropping by nine points.

Now in its eighth year of publication, the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings evaluates 318 companies across 20 industries: airlines, auto dealers, banks, computer & tablet makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, health plans, hotels & rooms, insurance carriers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, rental cars & transport, retailers, software firms, streaming media, supermarket chains, TV & appliance makers, TV/Internet service providers, utilities and wireless carriers.

To generate these ratings, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to evaluate their recent experiences with a company across three dimensions: success (can you do what you want to do?), effort (how easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (how do you feel about the interactions?). Temkin Group then averaged these three scores to produce each company’s Temkin Experience Rating.

In these ratings, a score of 70% or above is considered “good,” and a score of 80% or above is considered “excellent,” while a score below 60% is considered “poor.”