Silent Shoppers

Once a year at Opus we recruit “silent shoppers” to stay at the hotel anonymously and evaluate the experience. They book a room like a regular guest, pay full rate, have drinks in the lounge and dinner in the restaurant, order room service, and test the hotel’s facilities and services. To preserve anonymity, we rebate their charges after they’ve checked out. Tough job, I know. But it’s a great investment for the hotel because it provides a detailed, objective assessment of the guest experience.

Two silent shoppers stayed at Opus last month. Their silence is now over; the reports are in. I read through them yesterday, holding my breath, fearing something unusual and horrible might have happened.

The shoppers were Susan, a respected industry veteran who has run some of Vancouver’s best hotels, including the Pan Pacific and the Metropolitan, and Tom, an executive with Morgan’s Hotel Group and formerly with Ritz Carlton. Opus is a contemporary boutique hotel, but we seek a range of backgrounds in our shoppers. Contemporary or traditional, large or small, many of the same standards apply - luxury is luxury. To get a variety of perspectives, sometimes we bring in shoppers with no hotel background. Last year we recruited Chris, a partner with Rethink Advertising, avid traveller and boutique hotel aficionado. His assessment was so impressive we hired his firm to refresh our brand.

At chain hotels I’ve worked at we were always in fear of shoppers, whether from head office, ownership, the management company or a travel rating program like AAA. Our greatest dread was that we would appear in one of these reports as the indifferent employee, or the incompetent one, or the one who spilled hot coffee on the inspector. So we regarded each guest as a potential shopper.

The AAA evaluation process was always interesting. The inspector would arrive in town to check out a bunch of hotels, and by the time he got to ours we had been tipped off. We’d roll out the red carpet, so the inspector’s experience was never that of a typical guest. This was sometimes necessary in order to pass the inspection, however, for AAA criteria is strict and unforgiving, particularly for 5-Diamond hotels. One hotel I worked at had its rating downgraded from 5-Diamond to 4, which was devastating to morale. At the time I feared I was somehow responsible, that my name was highlighted repeatedly in that fateful report, even though I worked in sales and had no contact with the inspector.

Certain membership organizations have sales people they pass off as “inspectors”, dispatching them to hotels to evaluate the experience, then extending an “exclusive invitation" to join the club – for a substantial fee.

One night when I was duty manager at the Pan Pacific we were expecting the chain’s president to check in. His suite had been inspected by virtually every manager, with a meticulousness and paranoia rivalling the Secret Service. Unfortunately, no one recognized him upon arrival. He was registered without ceremony and sent off unescorted to one of the smallest rooms in the hotel. When I found out I was mortified. I chased him down, but he waved me away, insisting on experiencing the hotel from a regular guest’s perspective. Things must have gone okay, because I didn’t get fired.

As for this month’s shoppers reports, I'm happy to say that Opus fared exceptionally well. There is always room for improvement, of course, and the feedback from Tom and Susan will help us to get better. This week I’ll be reviewing the report in detail with all department heads.

And then we can focus our attention on the really important shoppers, our paying guests.