Hotel staff and management may be too close to daily operations to notice certain details, so they count on customer ratings to help them improve. James A. Bardi discusses this concept in "Hotel Front Office Management," and explains how surveys are kept on file and used to determine not only problems, but also ways to add value to the hotel's services.
Consider your overall stay at the hotel to determine if your expectations were met in areas of customer service, amenities and accommodations. Maybe the room was beautiful and comfortable as advertised, but the extra towels you asked for were never delivered. The accommodations in this case deserve a high rating, but customer service should receive lower scores.
Consult any attached instructions--usually found at the top of the ratings card-- before scoring, and learn the point system in use. For number-based rating systems, verify whether the points are in ascending or descending order. Assuming number one is the highest rating could tell the hotel the opposite of what you intended.
Fill out the hotel's number or scale-based ratings card. Take your time and consider the entire range of options. Respondents can often give misleading results due to filling out ratings too quickly. Some people also tend to rate only within a small portion of the scale, like that one teacher who never awards A's. These behaviors make it difficult for the hotel to discern the most important issues.
