Mystery guest audits, LQA, Forbes, and the Owner’s Audit

How mystery guest audits work

A mystery shopping firm places an evaluator at the property for one or more nights. The evaluator follows a scenario, records whether each touchpoint met the standard, and submits a scored report. Firms such as Coyle Hospitality run these programmes for brands and management companies across whole portfolios; they are a compliance instrument, and a good one.

The buyer is almost always the operator. The standard is the operator’s. The evaluator does not react on site, because reacting would contaminate the score. Everything about the design serves consistency across hundreds of properties, which is exactly what a brand needs and not quite what an owner needs.

For reference: LQA assessments benchmark against a luxury standard running to more than a thousand individual criteria across the departments of a hotel, are conducted anonymously over one to three nights, and are recommended at least twice a year; Forbes Travel Guide inspectors visit every rated property incognito and assess against up to around nine hundred standards.^[1–4]

LQA and Forbes Travel Guide

LQA (Leading Quality Assurance) measures a luxury hotel against its own global luxury benchmark, anonymously, and returns a confidential report to the hotel. Forbes Travel Guide sends incognito inspectors to every property it rates and publishes a star rating. LQA is internal-facing; Forbes is external-facing. Both are silent, both measure against a fixed standard, and neither looks at the website, search visibility or the booking path that produced the guest in the first place.

An owner can hold an LQA score and still not know whether the operator is capturing the demand the asset deserves, or whether the guest who arrives is receiving what the website promised.

Why silence is the wrong posture for the owner

A silent inspector learns how the property performs when nothing is asked of it. An owner also needs to know how the property performs when something is asked of it: when a guest says the room is not right, the pool is closed without notice, the golf tee time was lost, the kids’ club is understaffed. Service recovery is where luxury is actually decided, and a silent audit never triggers it.

So the Owner’s Audit is unannounced but not silent. The property is not told a review is under way or who commissioned it. But when something is not working, it is said, clearly and in detail, the way an exacting guest would say it. How the operator hears that, handles it and recovers from it is the part of the report no operator-side audit will ever contain.

Side by side

When silence is right: the comp set

There is one place where the Owner’s Audit is fully silent: at the competing properties. When comp set benchmarking is commissioned, the same review is run at equivalent resorts, and there nothing is raised. Everything is recorded, nothing is signalled, so the owner’s report carries the full advantage of the comparison and the competitors learn nothing about their failings or their successes.

Questions owners ask

• Is the Owner’s Audit a mystery guest audit?

  No. A mystery guest audit is silent and reports to the operator against the operator’s checklist. The Owner’s Audit is commissioned by the owner, includes the digital estate, and is unannounced but not silent: shortcomings are raised on site so the operator’s response can be assessed.

• Should a luxury hotel have both an LQA assessment and an Owner’s Audit?

  They are complementary. LQA tells the operator how the property scores against a luxury benchmark. The Owner’s Audit tells the owner how the asset performs against the market and the promise it makes online, and how the operator recovers when a guest raises a problem.

• Does the hotel know a mystery guest or owner’s auditor is staying?

  In neither case. Mystery evaluators are anonymous. The Owner’s Audit is booked and paid for as an ordinary stay, and the property is not told that a review is under way or who commissioned it.

• How many nights does each take?

  Quality inspections typically run one to three nights. The Owner’s Audit runs a minimum of four nights so it covers arrival, the settled middle of a stay, the moments when something goes wrong, and departure. Golf, spa and family resorts often warrant longer.

• Which properties is the Owner’s Audit designed for?

  Luxury family resorts, golf resorts and five-star resorts in Europe, where the guest journey spans several days and several revenue centres. The method applies to any owned hotel.

• What is a mystery guest in a hotel?

  An anonymous evaluator, placed by a mystery shopping firm, who stays at the hotel, scores the experience against a checklist, and reports, usually to the operator or brand. The evaluator does not react on site.

• What is the role of a mystery guest?

  To record whether each touchpoint met the standard without influencing the outcome. That silence is deliberate and is the main difference from the Owner’s Audit, which raises shortcomings so the operator’s recovery can be assessed.

• What is the 10 and 5 rule in hotels?

  A service standard many operators train: acknowledge a guest with eye contact at ten feet and greet them at five. Brand-standards audits check for it. The Owner’s Audit notes it too, but is more interested in what happens after the greeting when something goes wrong.

Sources

1. LQA (Leading Quality Assurance)
2. Forbes Travel Guide, Standards and inspection
3. Coyle Hospitality, Hotel & Resort mystery shopping programmes
4. GoAudits, LQA Standards: What an LQA Audit Covers

Related

• What is a hotel audit?The five things the phrase means, and the one an owner needs.
• Hotel asset management and the view from the roomWhat asset managers see, what they cannot, and where an in-residence review fits.
• The Owner’s AuditScope, posture, inclusions, and how an engagement runs.