It’s become a running joke in our household—return from a trip and wait for the inevitable wave of travel surveys to hit your inbox. Scratch that. They don’t wait until you return any more. Nowadays, companies are so aggressive about feedback that you start getting survey emails while you’re still traveling.
If you use CLEAR at the airport, there’s a decent chance you’ll get an email asking how it went before you even board your flight. Rental car companies are no better—some send surveys while you’re still in the lot, engine barely off, asking how your experience was dropping off the car. Spoiler: it was… okay?
Whenever we go on a trip, we get emailed a flood of surveys about how every single part of the journey went. Each leg seems to come with its own feedback form—there’s one for the parking lot shuttle, one for the airport experience, one for the CLEAR checkpoint, and then the flight itself (broken down into online check-in, bag drop, boarding, the flight itself, baggage claim). And that’s before you get to the hotel, rental car, restaurants, shows, tours, and anything else you did while away from home.
The Trouble with Travel Surveys
I’ll admit, I usually have good intentions. I save them in my inbox, thinking I’ll get to them after I get home. But more often than not, they sit there unread until I finally mass-delete them during an inbox cleanup.
Why? Because most surveys have the same flaws:
- They’re too long.
- They ask too many repetitive or irrelevant questions.
- They’re poorly designed and, in some cases, downright annoying.
What Makes a Bad Survey?
The number one killer for me is time. If it takes more than a couple of minutes, I’m out. Companies should be able to figure out if I had a good experience or not within a few questions. I understand wanting detailed feedback, but there’s a line between informative and overkill.
Take hotel surveys, for example. They often start simple: Did you dine at the hotel restaurant? But answer “yes,” and you’re plunged into a rabbit hole of questions—Which meals? What did you eat? What did you like? What didn’t you like?—with required text boxes you must complete before moving on. By page five, I’m regretting ever clicking the link.
Airline surveys are another offender. I’ve had surveys ask about every possible service: online check-in (with separate options for app, mobile browser, or desktop), bag drop, counter experience, lounge use, gate area, boarding process, in-flight service, seat comfort, food options, entertainment system… it’s endless. And that’s just for a two-hour flight!
What Makes a Good Survey?
The best surveys respect your time.
Here’s a survey from InsureMyTrip.com after buying travel insurance for a cruise. It took less than a minute to complete. At the end, there were optional fields for comments and a checkbox if you wanted a rep to follow up. Perfect.
Another hotel emailed with a simple question: How was your stay? You clicked a number from 1–10, and that was it—unless you wanted to give more detail. Even without answering anything else, they’d still know whether you were happy or not.
That’s a smart design.
When Is a Long Survey OK?
Longer surveys aren’t always bad. If I’ve booked a major trip—like our Adventures by Disney vacation that lasted 12 nights and visited three countries—I want the company to know what worked and what didn’t. That survey took 10+ minutes to complete, but it was worth the time because the experience was so comprehensive. I felt like my feedback could make a difference.
The same goes for a cruise like the ones we’ve taken with Virgin Voyages. After the cruise ends, we receive a detailed survey that covers all the important areas: the cabin, food, shows, excursions, spa treatments, and even the embarkation and debarkation process. In that context, I’m more than willing to spend a few extra minutes because there’s a lot to evaluate—and it’s clear the cruise line is gathering feedback to make real improvements. We’ve even seen them do it over the years Virgin Voyages has been in business.
And that’s the key: when companies do something with your feedback, it feels worth it. For example, on group tours, it’s not uncommon for companies to switch out a local tour vendor if a destination consistently gets negative reviews. Sometimes, they may even tweak the itinerary if enough travelers say a particular stop wasn’t enjoyable. That’s the kind of responsiveness that makes a longer survey feel like time well spent.
But again—that’s the exception, not the rule.
Final Thought
Even though I mean to complete post-trip surveys, I rarely do. Unless the experience was amazing or awful, there’s not much to say about a Delta flight to New York or a one-night stay at a Holiday Inn Express. So, after a week or two, most of those emails get deleted.
If companies want more people to fill out surveys, the solution is simple: keep them short, relevant, and respectful of people’s time.
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2 comments
Valid. I wish that there was a short survey/detailed survey option for every one I’m sent because I’d respond to a lot more that way. Most of the time I have interest in filling out some lengthy survey but once in a while I really do have more to say, for good or ill.
Whatever happened to marketing focus groups? If companies want long and detailed feedback they should be using them. So when did you last hear of an airline, cruise line or hotel group using a paid focus group?