Would Your Team Recommend Your Property to a Friend?

Nearly half of whether guests recommend your property has nothing to do with the room.

Research found that employee engagement explained 40% of whether guests recommend a hotel. Not amenities. Not location. How your team feels about working there.

A Best Western study put numbers to it: a 10% improvement in staff engagement produced a 4% increase in guests saying they'd recommend the property—translating to two or three extra rooms sold per night. For a 50-room hotel at $150 average rate, that's $80,000–$120,000 in annual revenue.

You're either getting it or slowly losing it.

Here's the question that tells you which side you're on:

If a friend of one of your staff members needed a place to stay, would your team advise them to book with you?

You probably already know the answer. Who'd say yes without hesitating, and who'd hedge.

If they'd hesitate, you're already paying for replacement guests. Through ads, through OTA commissions, through discounts to fill rooms that should have filled themselves. If they wouldn't hesitate, you're holding something most operators let slip without noticing.

That gap isn't a morale issue. It's showing up in your numbers.

Why This Hits Harder Right Now

Staffing is tougher than it was. Margins are tighter. Guests are more cautious about where they put their trust. And quicker to move on when something feels off.

In that environment, the difference between a team that feels like insiders and one that's just showing up? That's the difference between guests who come back and guests you pay to replace.

This week's Destination Sunday made the case that guests borrow trust from the people who already belong. At the destination level, that's residents. At your property, it's your team.

When staff feel like insiders, when they'd genuinely vouch for this place, guests pick up on that. Even if they can't name it. When they don't, guests feel tolerated instead of welcomed. The stay is fine. The review is fine. The return visit never happens.

"If our team is not feeling jazzed, coming to work and feeling motivated by being surrounded by people with whom they have lots and lots of respect and trust, you will taste that. Your food will not taste as good. The hospitality will not be as good." - Danny Meyer

You don't see the loss on a dashboard. You see it in the guests you keep paying to find again.

Five Signals You Can Observe This Week

You don't need a survey to know where your team stands. The evidence is already visible.

1. They say "we," not "they.""We're trying something new with breakfast" versus "they changed the menu." The language is subtle. The difference in ownership isn't.

2. They recommend real things, not safe things. The insider sends guests to the restaurant they actually love. The employee sends them to the tourist trap that won't generate a complaint.

3. They mention ideas without being asked. Not complaints, possibilities. "Have you thought about..." or "I noticed guests keep asking about..." When that stops, they've moved from invested to present.

4. They flag problems before they escalate. The insider says something early because they feel ownership. The employee waits because it's not their job to notice.

5. They'd bring someone they care about here. Not to show off the amenities, because they think the experience would reflect well on them.

When these signals are present, you're holding something valuable.

When they've gone quiet, you don't have a morale problem. You have a future bookings problem.

Guests Know the Difference

Research from Cornell and the University of Colorado found that guests easily distinguish between scripted service and genuine interaction. Tight scripts work for a standard check-in. For anything more, a request, a complaint, a moment that could become a memory. Real responses land better than rehearsed ones.

One hotel GM, quoted in the research, said it plainly: "If guests experience the authenticity of service, they will forgive you even though the service has shortcomings."

That forgiveness doesn't come from training. It comes from staff who feel like they belong.

You can't script your way past a team that's checked out.

What They're Already Telling You

You don't need to ask directly what would make them recommend the place. Your team is already telling you, indirectly, all the time.

Listen for what keeps coming up: the scheduling friction three people have mentioned in different ways. The information that never reaches them until it's too late. The decisions were made without anyone explaining why. The moments when they feel like the last to know.

These aren't complaints. They're telling you where the insider feeling is slipping.

Most operators assume the gap is about pay or workload. Sometimes it is. More often, it's simpler than that—feeling consulted. Being told things before guests arrive. Having their input actually land somewhere.

The staff member who'd hesitate to recommend your property might not need a raise. They might need to feel like they're on the inside of what's happening. Not just executing it.

Protect What's Already Working

If some of your team would recommend your property without hesitating, that's not neutral. That's something you built—probably without a program. And it's worth protecting before you accidentally wear it down.

The Grand Brighton, a 201-room independent hotel in the UK, made staff experience a deliberate focus. Over five years, retention climbed from 42% to over 70%, and in the same period, they recorded their highest-ever guest satisfaction scores.

Think about the people on your team who feel most like insiders. What's different about them?

Sometimes it's tenure, they've been around long enough to feel ownership.
Sometimes it's role, they're close enough to guests to see the impact, or close enough to you to understand why decisions get made.
Sometimes it's relationship: you've shown them how you handle mistakes, share credit, respond when things go wrong.

Whatever created that feeling isn't automatic—and it can quietly disappear when you're buried in everything else.

One Move This Week

Pick one person on your team. Someone you suspect is closer to "employee" than "insider" right now.

Ask yourself: what's one thing they're not told that they probably should be? One decision that gets made without them understanding why? One moment where they're expected to execute something they had no part in shaping?

Then close that gap. Once. This week.

Not a culture initiative. Not a new program. Just one person, one gap, one week.

If you don't close one of these gaps this week, nothing changes next week. And nothing changing is how this keeps building, in the background. More guests who leave satisfied but don't return. More marketing spend to replace them. More revenue leaking through a crack you could have sealed.

A Note on What This Doesn't Do

This piece won't give you a script, a system, or a checklist. If you're looking for a plug-and-play fix, it's going to feel incomplete.

That's intentional.

The question "Would your team recommend this place to a friend?" requires honesty that's uncomfortable. It's easier to explain the gap away with "the market is tough" or "that's just hospitality now."

Those things might be true. But they don't change what guests are sensing when they walk in.

This is about seeing clearly before you try to fix anything. It won't fix staffing. It won't lift your RevPAR. But it helps you notice the leaks before they turn into real costs.

One honest decision this week is worth more than ten reactive ones next month.

Optional: The Insider Audit (10 Minutes)

If you want to go deeper, paste this into an AI assistant:

I run a [hotel / inn / vacation rental operation] with [X] team members.

I'm trying to figure out whether my team feels like insiders, people who'd genuinely recommend this place to a friend, or employees who are just doing their job. The difference shows up in how guests experience the property, even if I can't always see it directly.

I already suspect [brief note on what you're noticing or wondering about—e.g., "one or two longer-tenured staff seem checked out lately" or "my front desk team feels more distant than they used to"].

Ask me no more than 6 diagnostic questions that help me uncover:

1. Which team members would likely say yes, hesitate, or say no if asked whether they'd recommend this place to someone they care about
2. What behaviours I've noticed (or stopped noticing) that suggest insider versus employee
3. What conditions in my operation might be creating or widening the gap—things like information flow, scheduling, how decisions get made, or how recognition happens
4. What I might be protecting or accidentally wearing down without realising it

After the diagnostic questions, suggest one concrete thing I could adjust this week—something small, specific, and testable.

Keep the questions grounded and conversational—things I could actually observe, ask about, or test in the next few days. Skip abstract culture advice.

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What You're Paying For Either Way

You're already paying for this. The only question is whether you're paying attention.

Every guest who leaves satisfied but not delighted. Every review that's fine but not glowing. Every return visit that doesn't happen because nothing stuck—nothing made them want to come back.

That's not a culture problem. That's a replacement cost. And you're covering it every time you run another ad, offer another discount, or pay another OTA commission to fill a room that should have filled itself.

The team members who feel like insiders are carrying something for you—a warmth that guests pick up on every time they walk through the door. When that slips, guests don't complain. They just don't return.

A short line at the café. A guest mentions they're looking for somewhere to eat tonight. Your staff member could give the safe answer—the place that won't generate a complaint. Instead, they pause, recommend somewhere real. The guest nods, walks away with a small sense that this place is held by someone who actually belongs here.

That's the transfer. That's what you're protecting—or losing—with every shift, every decision, every small signal about who's on the inside.

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No pressure. Just a clearer way to see what's already happening in your operation.
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Further Reading

EHL Hospitality Insights — "Employee Engagement: The Method Behind Hospitality Success"A solid overview of why engagement matters in hospitality, with practical context for operators. Read the article

Harvard Business Review — "Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work"The foundational research linking employee satisfaction to customer loyalty to profit. Dense but worth it if you want to understand the mechanics. Read the article

Destination Sunday — "Residents Aren't Stakeholders. They're the Experience."The destination-level framework this article builds on. If guests borrow trust from the people who belong, this explains what that looks like at the community level. Read on Substack

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