Happy Returns

Built for services marketing, customer experience and digital marketing classes, and a natural partner to a lecture on customer journey mapping and service quality. Every job's explanation links to the research or regulation behind it; the hotels, guests and numbers are fictional.

1. Reloading is safe.The game remembers where you are in this browser tab, so an accidental refresh will not lose the scores. Closing the tab clears it.
2. There is no back button.Once you press Reveal, that round's picks are locked in. Read each team's letters back first.
3. The game stops teams going over budget.Letters that would break the £8k fade out. Round 2's housekeeping cut gives £2k back; if a team untakes it, the game asks them to drop something else first.
4. Timers never start themselves and never move the game on.Press Start. At 0:00 three bells chime and the clock turns pink.
5. The same 100 guests stay at every hotel.Hotels don't compete for guests, so one team's choices never change another team's score. Differences come only from choices.

On inspection day, a fake countdown costs Book −3, and survey gating is exposed: head office surveys every guest, so the "dashboard" figure is replaced by the true one. Closing the loop (Round 3, G) moves guests who scored 5 or 6 up one point. NPS does not depend on other teams' choices.

Round 1: Before they arrive (£8k)

Round 2: During the stay (£8k)

Round 3: After they leave (£8k, boiler alert)

During the rounds, risky jobs show only a teaser ("Hmm…"), so nobody gives the game away. Their full explanation appears on inspection day. After each reveal, every hotel card shows its 100 guests as dots (mint promoters, yellow passives, pink detractors), its journey map against the previous round (dashed), and which moments guests remember.

1. Everything is fictional.The hotels, guests, reviews, costs and effects are invented for teaching. Costs only show which jobs are cheap or expensive.
2. Feelings are single scores.Each stage has one feeling score from −5 to +5. Real journeys have many touchpoints, channels and personas, and different guests feel them differently.
3. The memory formula is a teaching choice.The peak-end rule (Kahneman et al., 1993) is a real finding: people judge experiences largely by their most intense moments and how they end. The exact 50/50 blend of best, worst and end with the overall average is not a research estimate.
4. From memory to a score.The constants (7.0 + 0.8 × remembered score, guest tendencies with SD 1.7) were tuned so the game plays well, not estimated from hotel data. Real hotels' NPS varies widely by market and method.
5. Effects are fixed, equal and additive.The designer set each job's effect, guided by the cited research and rules. In reality, effects depend on execution and context, and rarely add up this neatly.
6. NPS is one lens.It is used because it is widely used, not because it is perfect. Researchers debate how well it predicts growth (Keiningham et al., 2007). CSAT and customer effort scores answer different questions.
7. UK rules, simplified.The legal points describe UK rules in 2026 in plain language. They are not legal advice.

The cost cutter is the most memorable line on the NPS tracker: it rises to +39 on the dashboard after Round 3, then falls to −24 when head office surveys everyone. "Delight first" spends almost the whole budget and ends at 0, because fizz, mattresses and a brand video barely touch the moments guests remember.

1. 0

   Set the scene and form teams

   1.5 min

   

   Say

   "You each run a hotel on the Dundee waterfront. Same building, same journey, same unhappy guests. Read the reviews: where does it go wrong? You get £8k a round. The same hundred guests stay with each of you, and at the end head office asks every one of them: would you recommend us?"

   Students

   Four teams, each with paper, a pen and a runner. Rename the hotels on screen if you like.

2. 1

   Round 1: Before they arrive

   3 min · timer 2:00

   

   Click

   1. Press Full screen, then Start.
   2. At 0:00, runners hold up their letters. Tap each team's letters in its panel.
   3. Read the picks back, then press Reveal the results. The guest dots fill in one by one.

   Watch for

   • The brand video (F) is tempting and eats £5k. Let the reveal do the talking.
   • Teams rarely notice that the pre-arrival email (D) also improves arrival. Point at the Arrive dot after the reveal.

   

   

3. 2

   Round 2: During the stay

   3 min · timer 2:00

   Say

   "Look at your own journey map now. Where is your worst moment?"

   Click

   Next round, Start, tap letters, Reveal the results.

   Watch for

   Fixing check-in (B) is usually the biggest single jump of the game. Teams who bought fizz and mattresses instead are often surprised; ask them which moment guests will tell their friends about.

4. 3

   Round 3: After they leave, with a boiler failure

   3.5 min · timer 2:00

   

   Say

   "Read the pink box before you spend anything. Who is going to fix this, and how?"

   Watch for

   Survey gating (F) is free and sounds clever. Teams who pick it see their dashboard jump in the reveal. Don't comment yet: "Interesting. Head office will be pleased… for now."

5. 4

   Inspection day and the final results

   2 min

   

   

   Say

   "A real NPS survey never reaches everyone, and the score you get depends on who you ask, when and how. Here head office did the impossible and asked every guest, so we can see the truth."

6. 5

   Debrief

   1 to 4 min

   

Share lab.yingwu.co.uk/happy-returns/#solo for homework or revision. The player runs one hotel against three rival groups that choose in secret, each with a personality: the Delight Squad loves wow gestures, the Cost Cutters go for cheap tricks, and Textbook CX knows the theory but doesn't always apply it. Their picks have some randomness, so replays differ. Winning the highest true NPS earns the "Guest favourite" badge; finishing any game earns "Journey mapper". Badges are saved only in that browser.

1. Biggest single move? Almost always fixing check-in (Round 2, B): it turns the worst moment of the journey from −4 into a positive one. Delight jobs (fizz, mattresses) add to a stage that is already strong, so they barely move how guests remember the stay.
2. Why the worst moment first? The peak-end rule: people judge an experience largely by its most intense moments and its ending, not by averaging every minute. In journey mapping terms, the pain points and the final touchpoints are the moments of truth.
3. What would head office have got wrong? They would think service was fine, skip investment in the real problems, reward the wrong managers and never hear from the guests most likely to complain publicly. When a measure becomes a target, people find ways to move the measure rather than the reality (Goodhart's law). Survey design (who, when, how) matters as much as the question.
4. NPS, CSAT or effort? Right after check-in, a customer effort or satisfaction question about that interaction ("How easy was it to check in?") tells you most about the touchpoint. NPS is a relationship question about the whole stay and is better asked afterwards. Many firms use all three at different points.
5. Plan for failures? No. Well-handled recovery can lift satisfaction (the service recovery paradox), but a meta-analysis found the effect does not extend to repurchase intentions or word of mouth (de Matos et al., 2007), and failures have real costs. Plan the recovery process instead: who apologises, what they can offer, how fast, and how you follow up.

• Bain & Company (n.d.) Measuring your Net Promoter Score. nps.bain.com
• Baymard Institute (2026) How to reduce cart abandonment. baymard.com
• Competition and Markets Authority (2019) Hotel booking sites to make major changes after CMA probe, 6 February. gov.uk
• Competition and Markets Authority (2025, updated 2026) Price transparency (CMA209). gov.uk
• de Matos, C.A., Henrique, J.L. and Rossi, C.A.V. (2007) 'Service recovery paradox: a meta-analysis', Journal of Service Research, 10(1), pp. 60–77. doi.org
• Dixon, M., Freeman, K. and Toman, N. (2010) 'Stop trying to delight your customers', Harvard Business Review, July–August. hbr.org
• Hyken, S. (2021) An empowerment lesson from the Ritz-Carlton. hospitalitynet.org
• Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, B.L., Schreiber, C.A. and Redelmeier, D.A. (1993) 'When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end', Psychological Science, 4(6), pp. 401–405. psychologicalscience.org
• Keiningham, T.L., Cooil, B., Andreassen, T.W. and Aksoy, L. (2007) 'A longitudinal examination of Net Promoter and firm revenue growth', Journal of Marketing, 71(3), pp. 39–51. doi.org
• Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1985) 'A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research', Journal of Marketing, 49(4), pp. 41–50. doi.org
• Slaughter and May (2025) CMA clarifies expectations on consumer reviews but uncertainties remain. thelens.slaughterandmay.com
• Tax, S.S., Brown, S.W. and Chandrashekaran, M. (1998) 'Customer evaluations of service complaint experiences: implications for relationship marketing', Journal of Marketing, 62(2), pp. 60–76. Google Scholar

A simplified classroom model: the scores, costs and effects are illustrative teaching devices, not estimates of real hotel performance. The hotels are fictional.