Increasingly, travelers engaging with technology are enjoying their hotel experiences more, according to a new report.
The J.D. Power 2025 North America Third-Party Hotel Management Guest Satisfaction Benchmark, which surveyed hotel guests between July 2024 and June 2025, released on July 15, and the key findings point to hotel guest interaction with technology driving positive experiences.
The report found that guest perceptions of value increased in every hotel segment, with upscale, midscale and economy segments seeing the largest year-over-year gains. Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power, said these value perception increases could be due to small, affordable improvements from hotels — ones that hoteliers might have held off on during the pandemic years.
"Now that a few years have gone by — and hotel owners and operators are getting back to those renovations and improvements and are working on hotel guest rooms and interiors — we did see satisfaction with guest rooms improve," Stokes said in an interview.
These improvements, at any size, can affect guest satisfaction.
"Whatever you can do as an owner and operator to make those improvements, big or small, will make a difference," she said. "So, even if you cannot afford a huge renovation as a hotel, what are the smaller improvements that you can make?"
According to the report, guests are increasingly expecting smart TVs in their hotel rooms, and adding them would be a small effort that can have a big impact.
The survey asked what hotel amenities guests consider “need to have” vs. “nice to have,” and 40% of respondents identified “smart TV/ability to stream my entertainment” as a necessity. This is up from 21% in 2019.
The report also found that more hotels have this feature. Seventy-two percent of guests said their room had a smart TV — compared to 39% in 2019 — and 60% said they used the smart TV during their stay.
"Consumers want to watch their streaming services while they're traveling," Stokes said. "They want the comforts of home. So, it's just one example of, if you can do something small, that would be a [thing] that a hotel owner or operator could invest in."
However, meeting this need is not as easy as going to a store and purchasing 300 smart TVs, said Mark Haley, partner at Prism Hospitality Consulting. Optimized streaming capabilities requires good connectivity and technology infrastructure at the hotel, whether that's through new smart TVs or the addition of a setback box that enables streaming.
"If you just run out and buy new TVs, but you've still got a shaky Wi-Fi network, your guests aren't going to have a great casting experience," Haley said. "But there are a wide variety of in-room entertainment providers at every price point in the marketplace, and most of them can support casting now, and it becomes a very powerful way to deliver that service."
Another tech-related takeaway from the new report is that guests who engage with a hotel's app tend to be more satisfied with their stay. Per the study, hotel guests who have downloaded their hotel's app have a satisfaction score of 699 on a 1,000-point scale, which is 68 points higher than non-app-using guests.
Stokes said that hotel app users tend to be brand loyalty members, who also tend to have higher satisfaction scores, but there's an opportunity for hotels to lean into app optimization, particularly on property.
"Hotel hospitality is very much a human team [with] human interaction," she said. "But how can the app support and enhance that interaction? And how can it help not only the guests, but also the staff serve the guests? There's both sides to it that I think there could be improvement."
Haley, who advises on all types of hotel technology, agreed that it makes sense that hotel app users are usually loyalty members who are more likely to be satisfied, but there's real opportunity for the technology.
"These are highly functional mobile applications — a mobile app that is just a piece of brochure where it doesn't actually do anything for the hotel guest is not going to provide a lift in guest satisfaction," he said. "But if you can book a reservation, make a service request, manage your profile, all of those kinds of things — using the mobile app where it can actually do useful things for you, that becomes a game changer."
Haley added big brands are going to be the leaders in this space as the apps serve as an asset to their loyalty members, but smaller brands and independent hotels can tap into vendors to be able to offer white-labeled mobile apps that can enhance a guest's stay.
With artificial intelligence technology on the rise, mobile apps have the potential for disruption, Haley said.
"We don't know exactly what form that's going to take, but we should assume that there will be AI agents driving these apps, and whether it's the guests' AI agent or somebody else's or the hotel company's AI agent becomes an open question. We might see some of both," he said.
As it does annually, the report looked at hotels that received the highest satisfaction scores across segments. Here were this year's winners and their scores, which are out of 1,000:
- Luxury: The Ritz-Carlton (779)
- Upper Upscale: Omni Hotels & Resorts (731)
- Upscale: Drury Hotels (738)
- Upscale Extended Stay: Hyatt House (705) (for a fourth consecutive year)
- Upper Midscale: Hampton by Hilton (694)
- Upper Midscale/Midscale Extended Stay: Home2 Suites by Hilton (711) (for a third consecutive year)
- Midscale: Tru by Hilton (723) (for a third consecutive year)
- Economy: Microtel by Wyndham (619) (for a third consecutive year)
- Economy Extended Stay: WoodSpring Suites (600) (for a third consecutive year)
Surveying for the 2026 report has already commenced, and the results will be available next summer. Stokes said next year's survey includes questions about AI in the booking process.