In the June 2010 issue of Consumer Reports, they have a special travel section that tells readers how to get great deals on travel.  They also announce their ratings for the year.  The hotel ratings, based on over 27,000 reader’s surveys, are somewhat surprising.  Consumer Reports has odd categories of hotels such as ‘fanciest’, ‘luxury’, and ‘upscale’.  The ‘upscale’ category for instance has both full-service and limited-service hotels.

The top score was a tie between Ritz-Carlton in the ‘fanciest’ category and Homewood Suites in the ‘upscale’ category.  The Homewood Suites scored an excellent in value and the Ritz scored very good.

Here are the rankings for a couple of the categories:

Fanciest – 1. Ritz-Carlton  2. Grand Hyatt

Luxury – 1. Renaissance  2. Embassy Suites  3. Marriott  4. Westin  5. Hilton  6. Hyatt  7. Doubletree  8. Sheraton

Upscale – 1. Homewood Suites  2. Walt Disney Resorts  3. Residence Inn  4. Hilton Garden Inn  5. Harrah’s  6. Springhill Suites  7. Hyatt Place  8. Courtyard by Marriott  9. Wyndham  10. Crowne Plaza  11. Radisson

Some interesting observations:

Out of 48 brands, only one hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, scored excellent on service.  Only 10 others scored very good.  The other 37 hotels scored average or worse on service.  Ouch.

Many full service brands like Doubletree, Sheraton, Wyndham, Crowne Plaza, and Radisson, are falling behind the limited service brands in overall satisfaction.

Guest are experiencing a surprising number of problems.  Out of the 48 brands, not a single brand scored excellent, and only 7 brands scored very good.  The chain with the least amount of problems (Drury Inn & Suites) still had 14 percent of guests reporting a problem!  The chain with the most problems had 47 percent of guests reporting a problem.

Sounds like we all have some work to do on our guest service!