Hotels in North America overall managed to keep guests satisfied during the year despite stresses from the COVID-19 pandemic. As the industry begins to recover, travelers are indicating which amenities they most value during an overnight stay.

According to the J.D. Power 2021 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, a survey based on responses from 32,963 hotel guests who took a trip between May 2020 and June 2021, key highlights show guests were most satisfied when room rates were reduced, flexible cancellation policies were offered, cleanliness was top-of-mind and employees were attentive.

However, respondents reported less satisfaction with hotel food and beverage, particularly for breakfast.

On a 1,000-point scale, overall hotel guest satisfaction was 830, which remained flat from the 2020 J.D. Power study and 10 points higher than in 2019, the release states.

"Despite hotels having to let people go, the fact that staff service and satisfaction with the service remained is good news," said Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power. "Guests clearly understood that sometimes hotels might be short-staffed."

Stokes said satisfaction with housekeeping was already at a high level before the pandemic, and that was consistent throughout the study this year.

"Cleanliness was top-of-mind for a lot of guests; the hotels really came through in terms of at least keeping up the housekeeping standards," she added.

• How did hotel guests feel about hotels when the pandemic first began? Click here to read takeaways from the J.D. Power 2020 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study.

Stokes said hoteliers had no choice but to decrease rates during the pandemic when demand was so low.

"The value story was there this past year, especially in luxury and upper upscale ... we saw a really big increase in satisfaction with rates. For limited service, we didn't see as much of a jump," she said. "I was surprised at the jump in satisfaction, especially in upper upscale. This means clearly there was a lot of that depression of rates in that category."

Compared to 2020, the upper-upscale segment jumped 19 points in guest satisfaction for cost value, and the luxury segment increased 10 points. Stokes said she expected to see some bumps but wasn't anticipating that big of a jump.

Guests also responded well to more flexible policies, such as with cancellation, both in the hotel industry and airline industry. Stokes predicts some of this flexibility will be permanent but not all of it.

"I know many full-service hotels may have waived resort fees; some of it will come back," she added.

Business travelers tend to be less worried about flexibility, while leisure guests are more sensitive to it, she said. The leisure traveler wanted flexibility during pandemic travel.

• Click here to read how hotel companies are updating cancellation policies as travel resurges.

It's also a little bit easier for the hotel chains to implement these policies than it is for independent hoteliers.

"When hotels can do it, they should," she said.

During the study fielding dates, J.D. Power reports 36% of hotels removed buffet-style services, which led to a decline in guest satisfaction.

"We knew we would get some dissatisfaction with food and beverage, pretty much in all segments," Stokes said, adding the economy segment was the only one with a rise in satisfaction.

Additionally, the decline was most acute in upper-midscale hotels. The complimentary hot breakfast offering in upper midscale had already come a long way pre-pandemic, she said, and it's "always hard to take something away from guests."

In place of buffets, grab-and-go options were mostly offered.

"It's through no fault of the hotel. They tried to do their best, but it was that variety that guests were missing, the quality guests were missing," she said. "What hotels were able to do with a small grab-and-go lunch bag of food, it just wasn't what guests were used to."

Breakfast is a large cost for hotel owners, and J.D. Power continues to measure the "nice to have" amenities and the "need to have" amenities.

Interestingly, complimentary breakfast is one item where either half the study participants say it's a "need to have" and half say it's "nice to have." Business travelers are typically the ones who say it's a need, and Stokes said fewer business travelers participated in this year's study.

"You risk dissatisfying half the guests if you're taking that complimentary breakfast away. Going forward, I think our point of view is that breakfast needs to come back in the form that it was, especially in upscale and upper midscale," she said.

J.D. Power has been tracking smart TVs as an amenity for the past several years, and each year it steadily increases as a must-have amenity. However, this year in particular, there was a big jump.

"I do think ... before the pandemic, smart TVs were slowly coming into some properties when renovations happened or when hoteliers were able to afford to upgrade. But now it's obviously more important than ever," Stokes said, adding that's grown even in the economy segment.

Guest demand for smart TVs grew 9 percentage points.

Additionally, this year's study showed more of a jump in the number of guests downloading a brand's mobile app for communicating with staff and mobile check-in.

However, this doesn't mean guests eliminated interacting in person with staff all together.

Guests also put more value on rooms with balconies and wellness programs this year, which can also present a revenue-generating opportunity for hotels.