Sandals manages guest experience across multiple resorts, collecting verified customer feedback through Feefo. When they implemented Feefo's AI-Integrated Product Sentiment Analysis, the immediate change was speed. A more significant change was clarity – getting a resort-level view of what guests actually think, rather than what surfaced during a manual search.
Key Takeaways
- Sandals reduced the time spent investigating a single feedback topic from 45 minutes to under five minutes (an 89% decrease) using Feefo's AI-Integrated Product Sentiment Analysis
- Sentiment tracking across resorts revealed issues that had been present in reviews but were more significant than manual scanning had suggested
- Topic trend monitoring now acts as an early warning system, allowing the team to flag declining sentiment before it affects more guests
- Automated reporting is being rolled out to individual resort teams, closing the gap between central insight and on-the-ground action
The challenge: valuable feedback, but too costly to use properly
Customer reviews were already central to how the team understood guest experience. But turning that feedback into usable insight wasn’t straightforward.
Identifying trends meant trying to piece together patterns across large volumes of feedback manually. Investigating even a single issue required significant work – with no guarantee of a clear answer.
The effort required often outweighed the perceived value of digging deeper.
As a result:
- Insights were often surface-level or delayed
- Trends across resorts were difficult to track
- Investigations could take 30–45 minutes per topic
- Deeper analysis was sometimes avoided altogether due to time
“Sometimes I was hesitant to even do it… it would just take so much time. Am I even going to find the information I want?”
The solution: from manual trawl to targeted investigation
Product Sentiment Analysis changed the depth and breadth of what the team could see within the feedback, which in turn, changed how they worked.
Instead of scanning reviews to confirm a hunch, the team now starts with a topic and understands exactly what’s wrong and where they can make an impact.
For example, where “sunbed availability” might previously have come up anecdotally in replies, they can now:
- Go straight into that topic
- See exactly what guests are saying
- Understand whether sentiment is positive or negative
- Quickly assess how widespread the issue is
What previously involved digging through hundreds of reviews is now a focused, five-minute task.
“Now I can go into it… and see exactly what people are saying… before, I’d have to go through all the feedback.”
The results: clearer insight, and sharper signals
The immediate impact has been speed – but the more important shift is in what the team can now see. The platform has surfaced themes that the team saw occasionally but which had deeper roots.
In practice, that has changed the team’s understanding of guest experience.
For instance, some areas like entertainment and bar service had been noticed before – but only in isolation. Seen in aggregate, the picture was different.
“I saw it here and there before, but when I looked on the platform it was much more negative than I thought…”
Having the data that backs up their instincts gives the team a far more reliable basis for action.
It also works with positive themes, reinforcing those elements that consistently matter to guests and helping ensure they’re protected or invested in.
Catching issues earlier
Another key gain is the ability to track how sentiment changes over time. The team can now monitor trends – and spot when something starts to move in the wrong direction.
“If I see a topic going down, we can flag that before anything gets worse.”
And if they’ve made changes, they can see when they’ve made a difference.
This turns reviews into a guest pulse check, rather than just a collection of feedback.
What’s next?
The platform has already changed what the team can see.
The next step – already underway – is making sure resort teams see it too.
Insights are currently shared within the marketing team and through internal updates, but there is clear intent to push these further:
- Feeding structured insight to resort teams
- Scaling reporting across locations
- Closing the loop between feedback and on-site action
The structure is now in place to make that possible.
Sandals’ experience shows what happens when guest feedback becomes readable intelligence rather than a manual task, giving greater insight and freeing up time to act on it.
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