Market Research for HoReCa & Tourism Brands

Why do some guests come back every month while others leave a polite review and never return? We answer with applied market research for HoReCa and tourism: concept testing, brand tracking, and guest experience studies. Recent work includes Wendy’s, Kiddo, BurgerHouse, and Șureanu. See the full portfolio below.

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How we help HoReCa and tourism operators decide with confidence

Google reviews tell you what happened at table 12 last night. They don’t tell you why some guests come back a month later and others quietly disappear. Market research with MKOR shows you which moments in your guest experience build loyalty, how you compare to the alternatives in town or in a destination, and what your offer is missing from the perspective of the people you want to attract.

We work with restaurants, QSR chains, hotels, and tourism destinations, turning what happens in the dining room, at the front desk, and online into operational decisions. Not reports that collect dust on a shared drive.

Concept testing for restaurants & destinations

A badly calibrated restaurant concept costs as much as a full renovation. We validate the menu, positioning, and perceived price through brand concept testing, and check feasibility in a specific location through market opportunity analysis, before you sign the lease. Example: the Wendy’s Romania consumer perception research, where we measured how the brand reads with local audiences ahead of network expansion.

Reputation & brand awareness in HoReCa

In HoReCa, awareness builds slowly and can be lost over one bad weekend. We track how perception shifts over time with continuous brand tracking and measure reach on the target audience through brand awareness research, with waves timed to capture the effect of campaigns and seasons. Real work: brand awareness in the edutainment market for Kiddo.

Guest experience

Guests don’t tell you on the way out that they were disappointed. They give you 4 stars and never come back. We combine usage & attitudes research with satisfaction studies structured around the touchpoints that matter: reservation, arrival, service, payment, follow-up. In the field: the dining habits survey for 14th Lane, which exposed which details in service actually decide whether guests return.

Customer journey online to offline

A booking starts on Instagram at 11 p.m. and ends at a table on Friday night. Between those two points you lose guests if you aren’t watching every step. We map the journey through consumer experience research and check operational standards through mystery shopping, with scenarios written against your real flow. Applied: the opportunity research for BurgerHouse, where we traced the route from ad to table.

Experiential tourism & trends

Today’s traveler doesn’t buy rooms, they buy experiences: local gastronomy, nature, stories. We measure these expectations and fold them into innovation & forecasting when you build a new tourism product, or into market opportunity analysis when you evaluate a destination or an investment. One example: the tourism opportunity study for Șureanu.

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Common questions about HoReCa & tourism research

How do you validate a new restaurant concept before launch?

We start from your hypotheses: target audience, menu, average ticket, positioning. We run brand concept testing on a sample that matches the catchment area where you plan to open, so we can check whether the proposition attracts the right people and at what price they accept it. If the question is “is city X worth the investment?”, we add a market opportunity analysis with local demand and direct competitor mapping.

How much does a guest experience study cost for a hotel?

It depends on the number of properties, guest volume, and measurement frequency. As a guide, a satisfaction study for a single hotel starts from a few thousand euros per wave, while a continuous consumer experience research program with monthly waves costs proportionally less per unit. For an accurate estimate, send us the project details and we’ll come back with numbers.

What methods do you use for brand tracking in HoReCa?

We run quarterly or semi-annual waves on a sample representative of your target audience, with questions on spontaneous awareness, associated attributes, and visit intent. For chains with multiple locations we recommend continuous brand tracking, so we can see how campaigns affect brand awareness close to real time. During active repositioning periods we double the frequency.

What data can a market research study provide for a tourist destination?

You learn who visits the area, why they come, how much they spend, and what they would need to return. We combine market opportunity analysis with innovation & forecasting, so you see both the current picture and the directions worth building toward. The data translates into concrete decisions: which segment to attract, which package to build, which channel to use.

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