Post-event surveys ask about the sound, the lines, and the likelihood of returning — and almost never about the trip, which is where attendees spent the most money and had the least help. Five questions fix that, and the answers write next year's lodging strategy.
The five questions
- How far did you travel? — bands, not free text: under an hour, one to three hours, further. This is your travel mix, cross-checkable against postcodes.
- Where did you stay? — hotel, rental home, camping, friends and family, drove home. The format split tells you what coverage to offer; the friends-and-family share tells you your price ceiling.
- When did you book? — more than a month out, two to four weeks, final week. Expect late answers: the market we measured moved roughly 70% of lodging dollars in the final 30 days, and your curve calibrates your reminder timing.
- How easy was finding a place to stay? — a one-to-five with an optional comment. The comments here are the strategy: too far, too expensive, sold out are three different fixes.
- What did the trip cost, roughly? — optional, banded. Even partial answers size the adjacent spend better than any assumption.
Getting honest answers
Put the travel block early in the survey, before fatigue. Keep every question answerable in one tap. And ask travelling attendees only — branch on the first question so locals skip the rest; nothing poisons a dataset like locals answering lodging questions with n/a in free text.
Using what you learn
The travel mix sizes any block. The format split writes your lodging page. The booking curve times your emails. And the ease score is your baseline: run the same five questions every year and you can watch the lodging experience — and the revenue attached to it — actually improve, instead of assuming it did.
From survey answers to next season's plan
The translation table, question by question. Travel-mix answers set the scale of everything: a rising far-travel share green-lights lodging investment; a shrinking one demotes it. The format split rewrites your page: a heavy rental share means home inventory leads; a hotel-heavy audience justifies block conversations. The booking-window answers move your send calendar — mail the main travel send where the median books. The ease score is the KPI: below par, read every comment and fix the top two complaints; at par, maintain. And the cost band, cross-referenced with distance, tells you which segments are price-stressed — the families to serve with budget options before they solve the problem by not coming. One survey, five questions, and each answer maps to exactly one lever.
- Report the travel findings to the whole team, not just marketing — operations and partnerships both act on them.
- Track answers year over year in one sheet; the trends outvalue any single year.
- Close the loop publicly: 'you asked for more home options; we added them' converts next year's survey response rate.