6.5.2 Administration of the full survey
Administration of the full survey was carried out using the same procedures as
with the pilot study with regard to the methods of distributing and returning the
questionnaires. To engender a higher response rate, the researcher became
significantly more vigorous in explaining to hotel contacts the importance for the
success of the study of proactively and insistently encouraging recipients to
complete and return the survey forms. There is some evidence that this strategy
did make a positive difference to the response rate. Specifically, the response
rate from the south east of England hotel group increased from 16.4 per cent
during the pilot survey to 54.9 per cent (from the remaining seven hotels in this
group) and the overall response rate to the full survey was 37.9 per cent (see
below). No pilot/full survey response rate comparison can be made for the UK-
wide group with a remaining 24 hotels to survey as, unfortunately for the
research, the group appointed a new manager to the job position that the
researcher was in contact with and this manager declined to continue to
participate in the survey.
Of the six hotels/hotel groups that Alan Cutler provided contact details for,
ultimately only two participated in the survey work. The south east of England
group in the pilot and full surveys and the UK-wide group in the pilot. The other
four hotels either refused to participate (n = 1) or procrastinated sufficiently (over
a course of four to six weeks) to avoid participation (n = 3).
The hotel contacts described above represented the initial set of hotels to be
contacted; to progress the survey the researcher subsequently contacted (based
on suggestions from individuals in his professional network) four UK hospitality
industry members’ organisations (hotel associations) and several individual
hotels. The remainder of the participating hotels were recruited through these
efforts.
In total, just over 100 hotels were contacted, 59 hotels agreed to co-operate with
the research and 27 of these actually returned survey forms (a co-operation rate
of 46 per cent).
In terms of individual survey forms distributed and returned:
1,459 survey forms were distributed;
234 survey forms were returned;
o representing a response rate of 16 per cent^8
8
This proportion of returns is identical to the pilot survey response.