British business travellers the most loyal to hotel brands: survey

A new survey has found that British business travellers are among the most loyal to hotel brands when travelling.

Fifty-four percent of survey respondents said they always stay at the same hotel brand when traveling on business and 52 percent said they will stay at their favourite hotel brand even if the property isn’t conveniently located.

This is a full 10 points higher than the global average. Further, more than half (53%) of British workers will even choose to stay at their favourite hotel when attending a conference or event, regardless of organiser recommendations. These figures come from the 2015 Egencia Global Traveller Survey.

The importance of free Wi-Fi is a major hotel feature for British business travellers, with 53 percent citing having to pay for Wi-Fi as their greatest frustration. What’s more, in what appears to be a desire to have access to work around the clock, a 24-hour full service business centre being available is important to 29 percent of British workers. This is considerably higher than European counterparts the French (17%), Germans (13%), Norwegians (11%) and Swedish (11%).

According to the survey results, British people’s reputation for patient willingness to queue is a fallacy. At almost one-fifth (18%), British business travellers are actually the second most frustrated nationality by queues at hotel front desks, with only Norwegians (22%) being more annoyed by queuing. However, rather than complain when on their trip, the famous British stiff upper lip seems to prevail.

When they do share feedback on a hotel stay, almost half of British workers will take to the Internet to leave an online review about a hotel. British business travellers are keyboard warriors when it comes to complaining about dirty rooms (57%) and unfriendly customer service (44%). The love of online has made British travellers the most thorough researchers in Europe, with 93 percent visiting more than one website before booking their hotel.

For hotels, providing an enjoyable online booking experience is essential to attracting British business travellers. For British workers, the inability to book a room on the required date (36%), too many search results / choices (26%) and not being able to view the location of a hotel in relation to their destination (25%) are the biggest frustrations throughout the booking process.

Graham Kingsmill, managing director, Egencia UK said: “Travelling for business, especially for frequent travellers, can be more hassle than it needs to be, so it’s no surprise that British travellers enjoy the familiarity of the same hotel or hotel brand. It’s therefore to be expected that substandard services create a wave of frustration amongst workers. This is something that Egencia understands and incorporates in its technology and services for business travellers and their companies. We feel it is our role to help business travellers, not just search for what they’re looking for, but find it.”