With a customer satisfaction score of 84.7, Hotels.com ranked joint fourth out of more than 280 brands, improving its score by 2.6 points compared with last year’s levels.

It was followed by Jet2holidays, which came in joint seventh after increasing its score by 0.8 to 84.5 points, and UK holiday specialist Hoseasons, which ranked 12th.

Another eight travel and tourism companies made the top 50, including booking.com (18th), Premier Inn (21st) Jet2.com (joint 22nd), Expedia (27th), Holiday Inn (joint 30th), Hilton (joint 34th), P&O Cruises (40th) and Trivago (43rd).

“The UKCSI is a benchmark of how customers feel about different companies they use and the customer service they are providing, and the findings of this survey show that our customer-first approach is working,” said Jet2.com and Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy. 

“This summer is our busiest summer yet, however once again we are continuing to operate our programme without making cancellations, meaning customers can look forward to their well-deserved holidays, just as they should be."

Launched in 2008 by the Institute of Customer Service, the UKCSI is based on the feedback of more than 10,000 customers over the likes of companies’ professionalism, complaint handling and product quality. 

The latest report showed that consumer satisfaction has dropped by 1.8 points over the past 12 months, going to 76.6 and hitting its lowest level since 2015.

According to the figures, only 15 organisations have improved by at least two points while each of the 13 UKCSI sectors have lower scores compared to last year. 

Data shows that customer satisfaction for the tourism sector has gone down by 0.3 points while transport has sunk by 3.9 points to 71.9. 

“This UKCSI highlights immediate and long term challenges for organisations, but I believe it also shows the opportunity for sustainable improvement in productivity, customer satisfaction and business performance,” said Institute of Customer Service chief executive Joanna Causon.

“We need to take the latest UKCSI results seriously as customer satisfaction is a predictive indicator of performance: when we see a drop in customer satisfaction, we will, in time, see an impact on customer loyalty, financial performance and productivity.”