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Best questions for hotel guest survey about cleanliness of common areas

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Adam Sabla

·

Aug 23, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for a hotel guest survey about cleanliness of common areas, plus a few tips on how to get them just right. You can build your own survey in seconds—just generate an AI-powered survey designed for hotel guest feedback, tailored to cleanliness and guest satisfaction.

Best open-ended questions for hotel guest survey about cleanliness of common areas

Open-ended questions are your window into real guest experiences: they reveal unfiltered insights, uncover pain points, and invite honest feedback you might otherwise miss. Use these when you want details, stories, or constructive critique. They’re especially powerful when you need suggestions for improvement or want to spot trends in expectations.

  1. How would you describe the cleanliness of our hotel’s common areas during your stay?

  2. Which specific areas within the hotel did you feel were exceptionally clean or not up to standard?

  3. What, if any, cleanliness concerns did you notice in shared spaces such as lobbies, hallways, or lounges?

  4. Are there particular times of day when you feel the common areas are less well maintained?

  5. How did the cleanliness of amenity spaces (e.g., gym, pool, business center) impact your experience?

  6. Did you encounter any cleaning staff? If so, how would you describe their professionalism and presence?

  7. Can you share an example of when our common area cleanliness exceeded or fell short of your expectations?

  8. What changes or improvements would you suggest for maintaining higher cleanliness standards?

  9. How important is the cleanliness of public areas compared to other aspects of your stay?

  10. Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your experience with our common area cleanliness?

With 93% of guests prioritizing cleanliness when picking a hotel, these questions are vital to understand and meet expectations—often making or breaking repeat bookings or positive reviews. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for hotel guest survey about cleanliness of common areas

Single-select questions make it easy for guests to quickly share feedback. Use these when you want clear, quantifiable data—great for spotting trends at scale. They also work well as a conversational bridge: a guest chooses an option, and you can follow up for details based on their choice.

Question: How would you rate the overall cleanliness of our hotel’s common areas?

  • Excellent

  • Good

  • Fair

  • Poor

Question: Which area did you find the cleanest during your stay?

  • Lobby

  • Hallways

  • Elevators

  • Fitness center

  • Other

Question: Did you notice any cleanliness issues in shared spaces?

  • Yes, frequently

  • Yes, occasionally

  • No, never

When to follow up with "why?" Right after a guest chooses anything other than “Excellent” on a rating question, follow up with “Why did you feel this way?” or “Can you tell us more?” This uncovers the reason behind their score and pinpoints exactly where expectations weren’t met. For example, if a guest answers "Fair," ask, "Can you share what made the cleanliness less than excellent for you?"

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always add “Other” when listing options to capture perspectives you didn’t anticipate. If a guest picks “Other,” prompt them to specify—this can highlight hidden patterns and uncover cleanliness issues outside traditional spaces, like a conference room or children’s play area.

Given 81% of guests see cleanliness as the most crucial factor in choosing where to stay, these clear-cut questions are essential in tracking and steadily improving your standards. [2]

NPS questions for hotel guest surveys about cleanliness of common areas

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a gold standard for measuring guest loyalty and satisfaction—and yes, it makes perfect sense applied to hotel cleanliness. By asking, “How likely are you to recommend our hotel to others based on the cleanliness of common areas, on a scale from 0 to 10?” you tap into both overall impression and word-of-mouth potential. This single question is a proven predictor of future bookings and reputation.

Try building an NPS survey for hotel cleanliness with just a click—see how this works in Specific’s survey builder.

And don’t forget: follow-up with “why” is just as important here (e.g., "What led you to give that score?") for turning score data into actionable insights and true improvement opportunities. Cleanliness can drive positive NPS. In fact, 78% of guests are more likely to leave glowing reviews for clean, well-maintained spaces. [2]

The power of follow-up questions

If you just ask one-shot questions, you get surface-level answers. What makes a survey truly insightful is persistent, smart follow-up probing—asking why, how, or what exactly the guest means. Automated follow-up questions are a game changer: they transform unclear or generic responses into concrete insights without extra work from your team.

  • Hotel Guest: “The hallways weren’t that clean.”

  • AI follow-up: “What specifically did you notice in the hallways that made you feel they weren’t clean enough?”

If you skip the follow-up, you’d never know if it was about trash, dust, smells, or a one-off incident—meaning your team can’t fix the right problem. With automated follow-ups, you do less guesswork and get more clarity every time.

How many follow-ups to ask? Typically, 2-3 well-chosen follow-up questions are enough. The trick is to be persistent but not exhausting—always give guests a way to skip ahead if they’ve shared enough. With Specific, you can set this intensity in your survey design for the ideal flow: dig deep, but don’t wear out your respondents.

This makes it a conversational survey: responses don’t feel like form-filling; it’s a genuine back-and-forth. Guests share richer, more thoughtful feedback because the survey responds like an attentive human interviewer.

AI survey response analysis is a breeze, too. Even if you’ve collected tons of text replies thanks to follow-ups, AI-powered analysis turns all those words into clear, actionable summaries. Filtering and extracting key themes are effortless—you can even chat with your data.

Automated, AI-powered probing is still new, so I encourage anyone to generate a survey and see firsthand how much deeper your feedback goes.

How to prompt ChatGPT to generate questions for hotel guest surveys about common area cleanliness

When you want to brainstorm hotel survey questions using AI, prompts matter. Start simple and get more specific for better results. Here's a basic starting point:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for hotel guest survey about cleanliness of common areas.

But AI always performs better when you add context: mention your role, your guests’ typical expectations, pain points or your goals for the survey. For example:

We run a mid-range business hotel and want to ensure our guests feel extremely comfortable in all public spaces. Please suggest 10 nuanced, open-ended questions for a hotel guest survey focused on cleanliness of common areas, especially lobbies, hallways, elevators, and public restrooms.

Once you have a list, ask GPT to organize them:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Choose the categories most relevant to your property—for instance, “bathrooms” or “amenity spaces”—and go deeper:

Generate 10 questions for categories: lobbies, elevators, and fitness center.

This workflow delivers highly relevant, focused hotel guest survey questions about cleanliness, tailored to your property and priorities.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is a smart, chat-like interview—questions are presented one by one, and the system (or AI) adapts in real time, asking relevant follow-ups and making the exchange feel natural. Unlike old-school surveys, where respondents slog through a static form, conversational surveys mimic a dialogue, boosting engagement and quality of responses.

Manual survey creation is slow and rigid: you have to write every question, every follow-up, and try to anticipate guest needs. With AI-generated surveys, you just describe your goal—the AI builds a full survey, writes human-like questions, and even sets up follow-up logic for you. This is not just faster, but often results in a higher-quality survey with far less effort.

Manual Survey

AI-Generated Survey

Static, limited to preset questions

Dynamic, adapts in real time to replies

Time-consuming setup and editing

Survey built and refined in minutes

Low engagement, form fatigue

Conversational, mobile-friendly experience

Difficult to probe for details

Automated follow-up questions collect rich insights

Why use AI for hotel guest surveys? Simple: results are more reliable, feedback is richer, and surveys feel less like a chore. With an AI survey example—built with tools like Specific—you engage guests effortlessly, collect better responses, and analyze feedback instantly. Try building one from scratch using the AI survey generator, or follow step-by-step advice in our how-to article.

With Specific, the entire process—from survey creation to follow-up probing and final analysis—offers the best-in-class conversational survey experience. It’s purpose-built to make feedback easy and meaningful for both guest and management team alike.

See this cleanliness of common areas survey example now

Experience a hotel guest survey that’s fast, conversational, and drives real improvement on cleanliness. See how easy it is to capture deeper insights and make every guest feel heard—right now with Specific.

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Sources

  1. revrebel.io. By the Numbers: No Surprises in Recent Statistics, But Are You Meeting Expectations?

  2. hospitable.com. The Major Impact of Cleanliness on Guest Reviews

  3. wowfare.com. Travelers Share Their Insights on First-Class Cleanliness and Hygiene Standards

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.