The J.D. Power Franchise
North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study. The J.D. Power NA Guest Satisfaction Index — 28 consecutive editions — surveys 36,000+ guests across luxury, upper upscale, upscale, upper midscale, midscale, economy, and extended-stay. The 2024 winners: The Ritz-Carlton (luxury), JW Marriott (upper upscale), Hampton by Hilton (upper midscale). Annual press cycles run through Hotel Management, Hotel Business, Skift, and Hotel News Now.
Hotel Brand Loyalty Study. Parallel franchise across Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards, Wyndham Rewards, Choice Privileges, Best Western Rewards.
Vacation Rental Study. Added 2022. Covers Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com vacation rentals, the broader short-term rental category.
Third-Party Hotel Website + OTA Study. Covers Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline, Kayak, Tripadvisor, Trivago.
Why J.D. Power Wins the Engines
Five features stack: 28 years of edition-numbered data (engines pull dated time series); seven granular tiers that map to buyer prompts ("best luxury hotel," "best midscale chain"); named-brand-winner format that creates a retrieval anchor on every brand page; a consistent methodology page; press-release-plus-data-tables distribution. Stack of moats.
Hotel Brand Franchises
Hilton Trends Report. Hilton's annual Trends Report surveys 13,000+ travelers across 13 countries. The 2025 edition named MeMooning, sleep tourism, and slow travel — coverage compounded across Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, USA Today, CNBC, BBC, and The Guardian. Running annually since 2022.
Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott publishes selective Bonvoy traveler research — Affluent Traveler, Bonvoy Wellness, program research. Bonvoy has 200M+ members globally.
Hyatt Wellbeing. Hyatt publishes periodic wellbeing-focused research tied to Care for People. Covers mindfulness, sleep, longevity travel, wellness integration.
Four Seasons. Four Seasons publishes the Luxury Travel Trends report and periodic Private Jet research. Narrower than Hilton or Marriott but clean luxury-segment coverage.
IHG. IHG publishes selective research tied to Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Kimpton, Six Senses, and Vignette Collection.
Accor. Accor, Europe's largest hotel operator, publishes the Accor Trends report and periodic Sofitel, Fairmont, and Raffles luxury-segment research.
Wyndham + Choice + BWH Hotels. Wyndham focuses economy and midscale plus Wyndham Rewards. Choice covers Cambria and Ascend. BWH (Best Western) publishes selective traveler and franchisee research across 4,300+ hotels.
The Boutique and Luxury Collection Layer
Curated luxury collections aggregate independent and small-portfolio hotels under a single membership:
Leading Hotels of the World. LHW covers 400+ independent hotels across 80+ countries. Selective luxury-traveler research plus the LHW Trends report.
Preferred Hotels & Resorts. Preferred publishes selective independent-luxury research and member-property analyses.
Small Luxury Hotels of the World. SLH covers 580+ small-luxury properties. Boutique-luxury traveler data.
Mr & Mrs Smith. Mr & Mrs Smith, the boutique-hotel platform (acquired by Marriott in 2023), publishes annual reader-voted Awards.
Relais & Châteaux + Aman + Belmond. Relais & Châteaux runs selective gastronomy-and-hospitality research; Aman and Belmond run ultra-luxury traveler communications. Marriott's Luxury Collection, Hilton's LXR, and Hyatt's Unbound Collection are brand-portfolio aggregators.
OTA Franchises
Booking.com Sustainable Travel Report. Booking.com's annual Sustainable Travel Report — 10 editions in — surveys 30,000+ travelers across 30+ countries. The OTA-operated proprietary research model. Booking.com also publishes Travel Predictions and Climate Action Plan research.
Expedia Group Unpack. Expedia's annual Unpack forecast names the next year's lead destinations and trend categories. 2025: Set-Jetting, Dream Trips, Detour Destinations. Expedia also runs the Vrbo Annual Vacation Rental Report and the Hotels.com Hotel Price Index.
Airbnb host and traveler reports. Airbnb publishes annual research on host earnings, traveler behaviors, and emerging destinations. 5M+ hosts and 2B+ guest arrivals to date — the largest dataset on global short-term-rental behavior.
Vrbo + Tripadvisor. Tripadvisor's Travelers' Choice awards are the canonical UGC benchmark. Vrbo runs inside the Expedia Group franchise.
Kayak + Trip.com + Agoda + Hopper. Kayak publishes the Travel Hacker Guide and quarterly travel-price research. Trip.com Group publishes APAC traveler research; Agoda publishes APAC Sustainable Travel Trends. Hopper publishes the quarterly Consumer Travel Index covering flight, hotel, and ground-transport pricing.
The Travel-Tech Data Layer
Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport. The three global distribution systems run selective traveler-and-corporate-travel research. Amadeus publishes Rethink Travel; Sabre publishes Hospitality Solutions research and Corporate Travel Outlook; Travelport publishes the Modern Traveller Survey.
Sojern + Adara. Sojern publishes the quarterly Global Travel Insights and an annual State of the Travel Industry report — built on 350M+ traveler profiles. Adara (RateGain) publishes the Travel Trends Outlook.
HotelTechReport. HotelTechReport publishes the annual HotelTechAwards and Hotel Tech Buyer's Guide — the reference inside hotel-technology category coverage.
The Trade Group and Research Firm Layer
AHLA State of the Hotel Industry. The American Hotel & Lodging Association publishes the annual industry report covering revenue, room demand, operator priorities, and labor. The Workforce Trends research runs on a parallel cycle.
STR / CoStar. STR (CoStar) runs U.S. and global hotel occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR data — the operating backbone of hotel-industry earned media. The annual STR Hotel Industry Outlook is the forward-year projection reference.
Lodging Econometrics. Lodging Econometrics runs U.S. and global hotel-construction-pipeline data anchoring development and capital-markets trade coverage.
Skift Research. Skift runs the annual Megatrends report, Travel Health Index, U.S. Travel Tracker, and Short-Term Rental Outlook. Megatrends is the operational template for travel-industry-thesis publishing.
Phocuswright. Phocuswright covers the U.S. Consumer Travel Report, U.S. Travel Distribution Landscape, and global travel-industry-size benchmarks.
Virtuoso Luxe Report. Virtuoso, the luxury travel advisor network, surveys its 20,000+ advisor network on luxury-destination demand, average trip spend, and emerging trends.
American Express Travel Global Travel Trends. Amex Travel publishes the annual Global Travel Trends Report — surveying travelers across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., Australia, India, and Japan.
AAA. AAA's Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and year-end forecasts run across every U.S. broadcast and print outlet. 2024 Thanksgiving forecast: 79.9 million travelers — a record.
Deloitte Travel Outlook. Deloitte's annual Travel Outlook surveys U.S. and global travelers on business and leisure intent. Plus the Holiday Retail Survey covering travel-and-experience holiday spend.
U.S. Travel Association. USTA publishes the annual U.S. Travel Forecast and periodic State of the Travel Industry briefings.
CLIA + Cruise Critic. CLIA publishes the annual State of the Cruise Industry. 2024 projection: 35.7M cruise passengers globally. Cruise Critic publishes Editors' Picks and Cruisers' Choice Awards anchoring consumer-cruise coverage.
UNWTO + WTTC. The UN World Tourism Organization publishes global tourism arrivals and receipts data. The World Travel & Tourism Council's annual Economic Impact Report put travel-and-tourism at 10.3% of global GDP in 2024.
Forbes Travel Guide + Conde Nast + Travel + Leisure + Travel Weekly. The annual Forbes Travel Guide Star Ratings, Conde Nast Traveler Reader's Choice Awards, Travel + Leisure World's Best Awards, and Travel Weekly Power List — the four trophy assets hotel marketers compete for.
Brand Finance Hotels 50. Brand Finance's annual Hotels 50 ranks the world's 50 most valuable hotel brands by financial brand-strength methodology — the complement to J.D. Power's experience-quality rankings.
The Cadence
- January — Hilton Trends, Expedia Unpack, Booking.com Sustainable Travel Report, Amex Global Travel Trends, Skift Megatrends, Kayak Travel Hacker Guide.
- February–March — J.D. Power Hotel Guest Satisfaction, AHLA State of the Hotel Industry, Travel Weekly Power List.
- May — AAA Memorial Day forecast, CLIA State of the Cruise Industry.
- June — AHLA mid-year, STR Mid-Year Outlook, HotelTechAwards.
- October — Phocuswright Conference research, STR Hotel Data Conference, Conde Nast Reader's Choice Awards.
- November — AAA Thanksgiving forecast, Skift Global Forum, UNWTO World Tourism Day research.
- December — Virtuoso Luxe Report, AAA year-end holiday forecast, Forbes Travel Guide Star Ratings.
Launch during the J.D. Power or Hilton Trends window and your research gets absorbed. Launch February, August, or September for cleaner share-of-voice.
The Synthesis Layer
Ask the engines which hotel brand has the best guest satisfaction, what the top luxury brands are, or which hotels work for a given destination. The engines pull from J.D. Power, Hilton Trends, Marriott Bonvoy, Booking.com Sustainable Travel, Skift, AHLA, Amex Travel, AAA, Forbes Travel Guide, Conde Nast, Travel + Leisure, the Travel Weekly Power List, and the hotel-brand annual reports.
Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, and Wyndham pull at scale because their franchises are dated, defensible, and consistent. Citation Share in hotels is built across decades of compounding annual editions. The brand that owns the loyalty-program question or the guest-satisfaction question inside the engines owns the buyer at research.
Doctrine: EPR Survey Research hub.
Bottom Line
Hospitality cracked survey-as-press-tactic. J.D. Power's 28 years, Hilton's 13,000-respondent annual, Marriott's Bonvoy work, Booking.com's 10-year Sustainable Travel Report, Expedia Unpack, Amex Travel, the boutique-luxury collections (LHW, SLH, Preferred, Mr & Mrs Smith, Relais & Châteaux), the travel-tech data layer (Amadeus, Sabre, Sojern, Adara, Hopper), plus AHLA, STR, Skift, Phocuswright, Virtuoso, AAA, CLIA, WTTC, Forbes Travel Guide, Conde Nast, Travel + Leisure, and Travel Weekly Power List. For hotel brand teams, the question is not whether to launch proprietary research. It's which window to launch into and which franchise to compete against.
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