Consumer Insights on Short-Term Lodging Decisions in the US

Client

A Global Lodging Brand

Service

Consumer insights

Sector

Travel & Hospitality

Coverage

US

A global lodging brand partnered with us to conduct a consumer insights on short-term lodging decisions in the US, focused on understanding how travelers make accommodation choices across different trip contexts. The study generated deeper travel behavior insights, hospitality consumer insights, and hotel booking research to support a more nuanced view of lodging decisions among US travelers booking stays of three or more days.

The research focused on travel lodging decision-makers with recent experience across business, leisure, and blended travel. By examining how needs shifted across solo trips, guest travel, and longer stays, the study provided richer context into evolving travel decision making and the real trade-offs travelers consider when booking.

The Challenge

Our challenge was to understand how travel behavior insights in short-term lodging decisions shift across trip contexts and how these shifts influence travel decision making and accommodation choice.

Lodging preferences vary significantly between solo work travel, leisure stays with guests, and blended trips, making it difficult to isolate consistent hospitality consumer insights and core decision drivers across scenarios.

The client sought clarity on:

• How lodging choices changed between solo travel and travel with guests.
• How business, leisure, and combination trips influenced booking priorities.
• What mattered most when selecting accommodations for 3+ day stays.
• How differences in loyalty status, income, and travel frequency shaped decision-making.

The study needed to go beyond attitudes to identify how travelers balanced practical and emotional considerations when making short-term lodging decisions across different contexts, supported by lodging market research and travel booking behavior.

What We Did

We designed a qualitative research program built around online webcam-based in-depth interviews with US travel and lodging decision-makers to generate deeper travel booking behavior and hotel selection factors.

• Conducted 24 in-depth interviews, each lasting 60 minutes.
• Included travelers who had booked accommodations for 3 or more days.
• Recruited participants with experience across business, leisure, and blended travel.
• Explored decisions made when traveling alone and when traveling with others.
• Structured the sample around the client’s targeted quotas, including a mix of loyalty statuses, income levels, and travel frequency profiles.
• Conducted all interviews online via Forsta’s InterVu platform.

This design created space for richer discussion around booking journeys, stay expectations, trip purpose, and the changing factors that shape lodging choice across occasions.

The Impact of the Research

The study gave the client a more grounded understanding of how short-term lodging decisions shift with travel context. It clarified how booking priorities changed across business, leisure, and combination trips, and showed how solo versus guest travel influenced what travelers valued most, strengthening overall hospitality consumer insights and travel booking behavior understanding.

Key outcomes included:

• Identified the key factors influencing short-term lodging choice.
• Mapped how travel occasions reshaped accommodation priorities.
• Revealed how loyalty, income, and travel frequency affected decision-making.
• Informed sharper traveler segmentation and lodging strategy development.

By grounding the work in real booking experiences, our extensive research helped the client build a sharper understanding of how travelers navigate short-term lodging decisions. Contact us to uncover decision drivers, consumer trade-offs, and market realities across audiences, sectors, and global categories.