J.D. Power's 2025 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study (NAGSI) ranked 102 brands across nine segments, and the results give points-and-miles members a clear-eyed look at where the hotel industry is actually delivering. With the U.S. average daily rate hitting a record $158.67 in 2024 and travelers taking fewer trips than they did a few years ago, the question isn't whether to book a hotel. It's which brand actually earns the loyalty you're handing over.
Surveying 39,219 guests between May 2024 and May 2025, J.D. Power scored brands on a 1,000-point scale across the room, dining, staff service, value, and the increasingly important categories of mobile app and in-room tech. The picture that emerged is one of clear segment winners, multi-year streak holders, and a hospitality industry that's quietly being reshaped by smart TVs and a phone in every guest's hand.
Here's what the rankings showed, what they mean for how you spend your points, and which loyalty programs look strongest heading into the rest of 2026.
The Segment Winners
J.D. Power broke the industry into nine segments. Each winner is worth understanding on its own terms, because the brand that wins luxury and the brand that wins economy are solving very different problems for very different travelers.
Luxury: Ritz-Carlton (779 points). Ritz-Carlton reclaimed the top spot in the luxury segment, with Four Seasons and Waldorf Astoria also finishing above the segment average. For Marriott Bonvoy members, this matters: Ritz-Carlton stays earn elite credit and are eligible for Bonvoy redemptions, which makes the top-ranked luxury experience reachable on points rather than only on a $1,500-a-night cash rate. If you've been saving Bonvoy points for a special trip, a Ritz-Carlton redemption is the most defensible use of them in the program.
Upper Upscale: Omni Hotels & Resorts (731 points). Omni's win here is notable because Omni Select Guest is a smaller, less-discussed loyalty program. The brand competes against Hilton's flagships, Marriott's flagships, and Hyatt's full-service hotels, and it beat all of them in this segment. If you have free nights to use and Omni Select Guest status, the rankings suggest the guest experience is genuinely competitive.
Upscale: Drury Hotels (738 points). Drury continues to overperform relative to its profile. The brand's hot breakfast, free evening reception, and consistent service have made it a quiet favorite among business travelers in the Midwest and South. Drury isn't part of a major loyalty program, which is the tradeoff. You give up points-earning in exchange for a more predictable stay.
Upscale Extended Stay: Hyatt House (705 points), four consecutive years. Four straight years at the top of its segment is the longest active streak in the entire study. For World of Hyatt members, Hyatt House is one of the highest-leverage parts of the program: you earn elite nights, can redeem points at relatively favorable rates, and now have four years of data showing the experience holds up.
Upper Mid-Scale and Mid-Scale Extended Stay: Home2 Suites by Hilton (711 points), three consecutive years. Three years in a row is the kind of consistency that should change how Hilton Honors members think about award redemptions. Home2 Suites typically prices in the 20,000-to-40,000-points range per night, which makes it one of the better value redemptions for longer trips.
Upper Midscale: Hampton by Hilton (694 points). Hampton's win is the most expected result in the entire study, and it's still meaningful. The brand has been a Hilton Honors workhorse for years, and the data confirms that the consistency travelers expect from Hampton is real. Hampton awards are often Hilton Honors' best fixed-price redemptions.
Midscale: Tru by Hilton (723 points), three consecutive years. Tru is Hilton's newest brand by a wide margin, and it's now won its segment three years running. The bright, minimalist design and lower price point have clearly landed with travelers. Hilton Honors points often go further at Tru than at any other Hilton brand, which makes this a useful piece of data for budget-conscious members.
Economy: Microtel by Wyndham (619 points), three consecutive years. Microtel is Wyndham Rewards' standout in the economy segment, and a third straight win signals that the brand's value proposition is consistent rather than lucky. Wyndham Rewards uses a flat 7,500-point award level at many Microtel properties, which is one of the cheapest standard-room redemptions in any major program.
Economy Extended Stay: WoodSpring Suites (600 points), three consecutive years. Now part of Choice Privileges after Choice Hotels' acquisition of Radisson, WoodSpring has won this segment for three consecutive years. For travelers who actually need a week or longer at a budget rate, the data here is straightforward.
Why Multi-Year Streaks Matter More Than Single-Year Wins
Five brands have now won their segment three years in a row or more: Hyatt House (four years), Home2 Suites, Tru by Hilton, Microtel by Wyndham, and WoodSpring Suites. That consistency is more useful than any single year's leader, because it tells you the brand has a repeatable operating model rather than a strong year.
For a loyalty member, this matters because award stays book months in advance. You're not booking the property as it exists today. You're booking the brand as it will exist when you actually check in. A brand that's been at the top for three or four years is far more likely to still be a strong experience six months from now than a brand that won for the first time in 2025.
The streak winners cluster heavily around two parent companies: Hilton (three of the five) and Hyatt (one of the five, but a four-year run). That's a useful data point for anyone deciding which loyalty program to lean into. If you're trying to consolidate your hotel earning into one or two programs, the consistency data points toward Hilton Honors and World of Hyatt as the programs whose mid-tier and extended-stay properties are reliably delivering.
For a broader comparison of these two programs side by side, our Hilton Honors versus Marriott Bonvoy breakdown covers how the earning rates, status tiers, and award charts actually shake out in 2026.
What's Driving Guest Satisfaction in 2025
The J.D. Power study went deeper than rankings. The data on what guests actually want, and how those preferences have shifted, is where the strategic implications get interesting.
Smart TVs and streaming have become table stakes. Forty percent of guests now say smart TV streaming is "must-have," up from 21 percent in 2019. Seventy-two percent reported a smart TV in their room, up from 39 percent in 2019, and 60 percent of those guests actually used it. Six years ago, an in-room TV was background. Today, the ability to log into your own Netflix or Disney+ account is shifting the satisfaction needle.
Mobile apps are now a satisfaction multiplier. App-using guests rated their stays 68 points higher (on the 1,000-point scale) than non-app users. That's a massive gap, and it tells you the brands investing in mobile check-in, digital keys, and in-app service requests are getting real returns. For a loyalty member, the practical takeaway is straightforward: download the app for whichever program you're booking, because the experience is meaningfully better.
Renovated properties dramatically outperform unrenovated ones. This isn't surprising, but the data quantifies it: travelers can feel the difference between a property that's been refreshed in the last three years and one that hasn't. When you're booking with points, it's worth a few minutes to read recent reviews specifically for renovation timing. A 50,000-point night at a tired property is a worse use of points than a 60,000-point night at a recently renovated one.
The Behavioral Shift: Fewer But Longer Trips
The average traveler in 2025 took 9 trips per year, down from 10 in 2023. The average stay grew to 3.43 nights, up from 3.36. Travelers are taking slightly fewer trips and staying slightly longer.
Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power, described this as "an important inflection point in the travel marketplace." The strategic implication for loyalty members is that each booking matters more than it used to. If you're only taking nine hotel stays a year, the difference between burning 30,000 points at the right property versus burning them at the wrong one compounds quickly.
Longer stays also tilt the math toward extended-stay brands. Hyatt House and Home2 Suites, both segment winners with multi-year streaks, are well-positioned for this shift, with their in-room kitchens and lower per-night pricing on stays of four or more nights. If your travel pattern is moving toward longer trips, check whether your dominant loyalty program has an extended-stay brand that earns full elite credit.
For travelers who want to maximize their longer stays, our guides on Marriott Bonvoy points strategy, Hilton Honors bonus point opportunities, and World of Hyatt's Guest of Honor benefit all cover how to stretch each award booking further.
Which Loyalty Program the Rankings Point Toward
The J.D. Power data isn't a loyalty program review, but the segment results do paint a clear picture of which programs have the strongest brand portfolios:
Hilton Honors comes out best by volume, with segment wins from Home2 Suites, Hampton by Hilton, and Tru by Hilton, plus a strong Waldorf Astoria showing in luxury. The breadth of Hilton's lineup (full-service, midscale, extended-stay, and luxury), combined with the multi-year streaks at Home2 and Tru, makes Honors a defensible choice for travelers who want one program that covers every tier. Hilton elite status also matches across many of these brands, so the experience scales with your status. If you don't have Honors status yet, our Hilton status-match guide covers how to get there from another program. You can also check current Hilton deals at Hilton's site.
World of Hyatt wins the longest active streak (Hyatt House, four years), and the program's strength has always been quality over quantity. Hyatt has fewer properties than Hilton or Marriott, but the ones it has tend to be well-positioned in their segment. If you value the program's lower award pricing and stronger elite benefits, Hyatt remains a smart core program. The Hyatt brand portfolio is browseable on Hyatt's site.
Marriott Bonvoy wins luxury through Ritz-Carlton, which is significant, but didn't pick up other segment wins this cycle. Bonvoy is still the largest portfolio in the industry, and Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and other Bonvoy luxury brands have strong showings. If your travel pattern leans midscale and extended-stay, though, the data tilts the other way.
Choice Privileges quietly picked up the economy extended-stay win through WoodSpring Suites. Choice isn't a flashy program, but a three-year streak in any segment deserves attention from members who hold the brand's points.
Wyndham Rewards holds economy through Microtel, with the flat 7,500-point award making it one of the better budget redemptions in any program.
For travelers who book outside of a single loyalty ecosystem, broader booking platforms like Hotels.com and Expedia make it easier to compare across brands when you're paying cash. If you're flexible on dates, Trivago can be useful for rate-shopping a specific destination across these brands.
A Note on the 2025 Study Methodology
One important caveat: J.D. Power redesigned its NAGSI study for 2025, so the 2025 scores are not directly comparable to prior years. Year-over-year score changes shouldn't be read as performance changes — they're a result of the new methodology. The full press release is available on J.D. Power's site.
What is comparable, and what matters, is the segment ranking itself: a brand winning its segment in 2025 still tells you that brand outperformed every other brand in that category during the same study, on the same scale, with the same methodology. The streaks across the multi-year winners are also meaningful, because the study has identified the same brand as the best in its segment for three or four years running, even accounting for the methodology adjustment.
For a deeper look at how loyalty status translates into actual upgrade experiences, our piece on travel-in-style points strategies and the spark miles business travel guide cover related ground.
The Bottom Line
The 2025 J.D. Power rankings (released in spring 2025) tell loyalty members three useful things heading into the rest of 2026. First, multi-year segment winners (Hyatt House, Home2 Suites, Tru by Hilton, Microtel, and WoodSpring Suites) are safer bets for award bookings than single-year winners, because the consistency suggests a repeatable operating model. Second, the gap between app users and non-app users (68 points) means downloading the brand's app is the highest-leverage thing you can do before any stay. Third, the shift to fewer-but-longer trips makes extended-stay brands worth a fresh look, particularly the two segment winners with active streaks.
The hotel industry is investing in smart TVs and mobile apps because that's where guests are voting with their satisfaction scores. The brands that figured this out, and have figured it out for several years running, are the ones worth pointing your loyalty toward.
Whether your next trip is a budget-friendly stay, a pool-view hotel weekend, a resort like the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun, or a trip to New York, the J.D. Power data points to a clearer answer: pick brands that have won their segment more than once, use the app, and book with the program that gives you the most consistent experience at the property tier you actually stay at.
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