Three weeks before your trip, the group chat is at peak excitement. Everyone’s in. No one’s thought about the details.
That’s your window. Send a survey now.
Not a vibe check. Not “what do you want to do?” A real survey with specific questions that surface the things that will actually cause friction. The stuff people don’t mention until it explodes at 11 PM on night two.
This guide gives you the exact questions to ask — including the NOLA-specific ones most organizers skip.
Why Three Weeks?
Early enough to adjust bookings. Late enough that people take it seriously.
Two weeks out, you can still change dinner reservations, rebalance the schedule, or flag a dietary situation before you’re standing at the door of a seafood restaurant with someone who has a severe shellfish allergy.
Day-of, you cannot.
Quick Checklist
- Build the survey in Google Forms or Typeform (both free)
- Keep it under 15 questions — people actually finish short surveys
- Make every question actionable. If the answer won’t change anything, cut it.
- Set a 5-day response deadline
- Chase non-responders once, then proceed without them
- Read all responses yourself before sharing anything with the group
The Questions
Section 1: Arrival & Departure
What’s your arrival date and approximate time?
This shapes your entire first day. For private villas, check-in windows matter. Knowing that eight people arrive by 3 PM and four arrive after 8 PM tells you whether to plan a group welcome dinner or just have snacks ready and leave arrivals to find their own way to dinner.
What’s your departure date and time?
Groups fracture on Sunday morning when half the crew has noon flights and everyone assumed they had the house until checkout. Know departure times upfront and communicate checkout hard stops early.
How are you getting from the airport to the property?
Rideshare, rental car, shuttle? If multiple people land within the same two-hour window, coordinating shared pickup saves money and keeps early stragglers from wandering solo. Assign someone as the logistics lead before anyone books solo transport — solo arrangements create coordination chaos.
Section 2: Food & Dietary Restrictions
Any dietary restrictions or serious food allergies?
Phrase it specifically: “Do you have any allergies, intolerances, or preferences we need to know about for restaurant reservations?”
New Orleans menus are heavily built around shellfish, pork, and wheat-based roux. Gluten intolerance, shellfish allergies, and strict vegetarian or vegan diets genuinely limit your options. You need to know this before you pick restaurants — our mixed diet restaurant strategy guide covers which spots handle restrictions well and which don’t.
Alcohol: What’s your honest comfort level?
Use a simple scale: doesn’t drink / drinks occasionally / drinks regularly / will keep up with anyone.
This is not about judging. It’s about not booking a three-hour cocktail crawl when two people in the group are sober. It’s about pacing the day so the heavy drinkers don’t drag the non-drinkers to their fourth bar at 1 PM when everyone else wanted lunch. New Orleans’s open container laws mean the drinking never really stops — know your group’s spread.
Section 3: Schedule & Pace
Are you a morning person, night person, or both?
Groups split hard on this. Night people want to stay out until 3 AM and sleep until noon. Morning people want beignets at 8 AM and can’t function after midnight. Neither is wrong. But you need the breakdown before you build a schedule that guarantees resentment.
What’s the one thing you absolutely must do on this trip?
Ask this. You’ll find out that one person has talked about this trip for two years and has one specific thing they need — a particular jazz club, one specific lunch spot, a morning kayak on Bayou St. John. Surface those musts now, build them in, and that person is happy for the whole trip. Ignore them and you’ll hear about it.
What’s the one thing you’d rather skip?
The honest answer is usually “Bourbon Street” — but sometimes it’s “jazz clubs” or “long dinners” or “anywhere with a cover charge.” Surfacing hard skips protects the people who would suffer through something they hate and never say anything.
Section 4: The NOLA-Specific Questions
These are the ones most organizers skip. They’re the most important.
How do you handle extreme heat and humidity?
If your trip is May through September, this is non-negotiable. New Orleans summer is genuinely brutal: mid-90s with near-100% humidity is a real afternoon. Groups with low heat tolerance need built-in air-conditioned breaks, outdoor activities scheduled before 11 AM, and a plan for when someone taps out. You cannot power through a NOLA July afternoon the way you can walk a city in October. Consult the neighborhood comparison guide for walkability and shade by area.
What’s your relationship with the French Quarter?
This splits every group. Three archetypes:
- Avoid it entirely — locals and repeat visitors who want Frenchmen Street, the Bywater, and the Marigny
- Do a lap, check it off, move on — first-timers who need to see it once
- That’s the whole trip — people who came for Bourbon Street specifically
Know your split. Trying to please all three in the same schedule fails everyone.
How do you feel about unplanned schedule changes?
This is the parade question without calling it the parade question. New Orleans has second line parades, spontaneous brass bands blocking routes, and during festival season, rolling street closures that change everything with an hour’s notice. Some people love the chaos. Some people get genuinely anxious when plans dissolve. If your trip overlaps with Mardi Gras season, Jazz Fest, or Essence Fest, unplanned disruptions are not a maybe — they’re a given.
What kind of music are you hoping to hear?
Don’t assume everyone came for jazz. NOLA has traditional jazz, brass bands, hip-hop, bounce, and everything in between. Knowing your group’s split tells you whether to anchor the evenings at Frenchmen Street, book a jazz cruise, or find venues running DJ nights. One question prevents an evening where half the group is bored.
What’s your walkability limit per day?
Walking is unavoidable in New Orleans, but there’s a difference between “I’ll walk a mile to dinner” and “I can walk eight miles and be fine.” Some neighborhoods are tough for people with mobility issues or bad knees — the Quarter’s cobblestones, late-night crowds in tight spaces. If anyone in the group needs transit options, properties in the Lower Garden District put you a block from the St. Charles streetcar.
Summary Table: Questions and Why They Matter for NOLA
| Question | Why It’s NOLA-Specific |
|---|---|
| Arrival/departure times | Villa check-in windows; Sunday checkout pressure |
| Dietary restrictions | Menus are seafood, pork, and roux-heavy — limited options for restrictions |
| Alcohol comfort level | Open container culture means drinking is ambient, not scheduled |
| Morning vs. night | 24-hour city means both schedules are valid and incompatible |
| Heat/humidity tolerance | May–Sept trips require A/C breaks; heat affects everyone differently |
| French Quarter attitude | Drives the whole evening geography of your trip |
| Disruption tolerance | Parades, festivals, street closures are part of the city |
| Music preferences | Venue types vary wildly; Frenchmen Street ≠ Bourbon Street |
| Walkability limit | Cobblestones, neighborhoods, late-night crowd density |
| Must-do and skip | Surfaces hidden expectations before they become mid-trip grievances |
Pro Tips
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Don’t share raw results with the group. You read them, synthesize, and build the plan. Sharing everyone’s preferences creates a committee. You’re the organizer — decide.
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Weight the must-dos. If 14 out of 18 people list the same activity, it’s on the schedule. If two people want something that conflicts with everyone else, be honest about the math.
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Ask about budget indirectly. Instead of “what’s your budget?” ask “how do you feel about one special dinner at a nicer place versus keeping all meals casual?” People answer honestly when the question is specific.
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The heat question saves trips. Organizers who skip this find out the hard way at 2 PM in August when half the crew taps out and the other half wants to keep walking. One question prevents a group split.
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One follow-up, then proceed. Send a reminder once. After that, build the plan around the responses you have. You cannot run a 20-person trip on perpetual hold waiting for four stragglers to respond.
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Cross-reference responses. The person who said “I don’t drink” and the person who said “I want to bar crawl all day” need parallel options, not identical schedules. Build in flex.
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Lock in the must-dos first. Before you finalize any restaurants or activity bookings, confirm all non-negotiables are on the calendar. Everything else fills in around them. Our budget tracking guide can help you hold the financial line once the plan is set.
For Large Groups (10–30 People)
The larger the group, the more a pre-trip survey pays off. With 10 people you can improvise. With 22, one undisclosed shellfish allergy or one person who genuinely cannot handle summer heat collapses an afternoon for everyone.
Before the survey, work out who owns what. The trip roles assignment guide walks through how to designate a logistics lead, a finance lead, and a restaurant point person before anything gets booked. Survey responses become much more actionable when someone specific is responsible for cross-referencing dietary info against restaurant picks.
Private villa groups benefit most from this exercise. Properties like Castleday Retreats in the Bywater (up to 30 guests per villa) and The Syd in the Lower Garden District (up to 22 guests per villa) mean you’re genuinely living together for several days. Friction that surfaces in hour 48 is friction you could have caught in a ten-question form three weeks earlier.