Two hundred survey replies and a busy season
A week after each tour, passengers get an email with a link to a survey. The replies go into a spreadsheet. Some are short and happy. Some are long and thoughtful. A few contain a complaint that should have been answered within days. Occasionally someone in the office reads through them, usually in the quiet months, by which time next season's programme is already on sale.
The survey itself asks about the tour in general. It does not ask about the specific hotels, the guide or the included dinners, so when a passenger writes "the second hotel was disappointing", you have to work out which hotel that was on that departure.
Feedback is collected but not connected
Collecting feedback is easy. Using it is harder, because replies are not tied to the departure, the suppliers or the tour leader, and nobody has time to read them all when they arrive.
- Surveys are generic rather than tailored to the itinerary.
- Replies are not linked to the specific departure and its suppliers.
- Complaints hidden in survey text are not answered promptly.
- Nobody groups comments by theme across the season.
- Good comments that could be used (with permission) as testimonials are lost.
Missed complaints and unused insight
A complaint in a survey that sits unanswered for weeks tends to become a public review. A pattern of comments about one hotel across several departures is the evidence you need when renegotiating, and it goes unseen. Positive comments about a guide or a restaurant never reach the person who deserves to hear them.
When planning the next season, decisions are made on the loudest memories rather than on what passengers actually said.
Feedback built around each departure
We build a feedback process that knows what each passenger experienced.
- After each departure, passengers receive a short survey built from that departure's itinerary: the hotels they stayed in, the tour leader, the included meals and activities, plus an overall rating and a free-text box.
- Replies are stored against the departure and each supplier, so ratings add up per hotel, guide and restaurant across the season.
- An AI step reads the free text and tags it by theme (accommodation, pace, food, leader, transport, information before travel) and flags anything that reads like a complaint or a safety concern. A person checks the tags.
- Flagged replies go straight to the office as tasks, with the booking and departure attached, so someone can reply while the trip is still fresh.
- Positive comments can be marked, and the passenger asked for permission to use them on your website.
- A season report shows ratings by tour, departure and supplier, with the main themes and example comments.
| Feedback item | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Hotel rating | Added to that hotel's season record |
| Comment tagged as complaint | Task for the office to reply |
| Praise for tour leader | Shared with the leader |
| Theme across departures | Shown in the season report |
| Quotable comment | Permission requested before use |
Feedback you can act on during the season
A week after a departure returns, the survey replies are in. One passenger was unhappy with the rooms at the second hotel, and the office has already replied. The hotel's record shows that three departures this season mentioned the same thing, so the supplier manager has something concrete to raise.
At the end of the season, the product meeting reviews each tour with ratings and themes side by side with leader reports, and decides what to change for next year from evidence.
Tour leaders also see the feedback about their own departures, the good and the critical, which is something most leaders ask for and rarely get in a useful form.
Is your feedback sitting unread?
- Survey replies go into a spreadsheet nobody reads regularly.
- Your survey does not ask about specific hotels or guides.
- Complaints in feedback have been answered late or not at all.
- You cannot say how each supplier rated across a season.
- Good comments are not collected for use with permission.