Hotel Mystery Shopping

Guest feedback without the guest!

USD

per mystery shop credit

Add telephone mystery shopping to help your team members grow, increase revenues, and give you a competitive edge.

What is hotel mystery shopping?

Hotel mystery shopping is a process where people (sometimes called mystery shoppers or secret shoppers) evaluate and write a report with actionable feedback on the guest experience at a hotel.

Want to know what’s happening at your hotel when you are not in the building? Need to improve online ratings? Need more revenue? A hotel mystery shopping program can help you achieve your goals. Shoppers pose as regular guests and assess various aspects of the hotel’s service, including the quality of customer interactions, cleanliness, staff professionalism, and overall guest experience.

Advantages

There are many benefits to mystery shopping your team members.

Identify training gaps with your hotel staff.
Supply team members with tactical and actionable feedback for real improvement.
Receive unbiased and professional feedback on service and sales strategies.
Ensure your hotel is maintaining and exceeding industry standards.
Undercover opportunities for a competitive edge.
Evaluate the proficiency of third-party call centers.
Analyze data to set training goals, create a consistent service experience, and improve online reviews.

More resources on hotel mystery shopping

MSPA

Why Oculus?

We don’t call them hotel mystery shops or audits, but “opportunity calls.”

All around the world, hotels use hotel mystery shopping companies to evaluate performance in sales and customer service. Oculus is pleased to offer custom hotel mystery shopping assessments made specifically for the hospitality industry. Telephone mystery shops are typical, but we can also conduct virtual shops of your online communication. We have embraced a modern approach to mystery shopping. Rather than setting out to “catch” your employees not performing, our aim is to discover ways to positively impact your business and team. Our mystery shopping services are geared towards identifying opportunities that can generate revenue, educating employees, and giving you a competitive edge.

Fully Customized

Modern Features

Competitive Data

Coaching Support

Proven Results

trusted by prominent brands:

Fully Customized

Our mystery shops are fully customized from top to bottom. Have brand standards or specific skills you wanted included into your hotel mystery shopping? No problem! It's free and included.

No set-up fees!

Begin with a free success call!

The hotel mystery shopping design process starts with a success setup call! You don’t have to follow our “standards”! Set your own. Your account manager will work with you to set up your calls in a manner that works for you!

Ongoing Success Calls. Need changes? Take advantage of our on-demand account success calls to review your account, adjust criteria, call scheduling or schedule coaching.

Schedule Success Call

Custom Criteria

We don’t determine the criteria to evaluate success in your hotel. Like in our hotel training programs, we work with you to customize the criteria you want to assess your team against. Choose steps that make sense for your hotel goals.

With Oculus, you can evaluate guest experience across all touchpoints. Are your team members delivering a consistent service experience across all locations, departments, or shifts? Hotel mystery shopping can help! At Oculus, you can customize all of your touchpoints and assessment sections. Here are some of our most popular criteria categories:

IMPRESS™ The Guest

Are you trying to decide where to start when choosing your criteria? Our award-winning IMPRESS™ The Guest program focuses on general refinement, hotel sales, and service skills.

Service Quality Consistency

Are team members using the guest's name, acknowledging loyal guests, and following up to ensure satisfaction? Service consistency criteria evaluate hotel-wide service basics. This can include criteria steps like:

First Impression: Speed, Greetings & Tone.
Fundamentals: Guest Name Use, Showing Gratitude & Creating A Service WOW.
Qualifying: Stay History, Reason For Visit, & How did you hear about us? Deal-break Needs Questions
Loyalty: Membership Level Acknowledgement & Program Promotion.
Connection: Conversation Vs. Transaction.

Customer Feedback

What do your team members do when they receive positive or negative feedback from your guests? This can include criteria like:

Sales and Upselling

Do your associates work to increase your revenue, ADR, and RevPar by having a financial perspective? Our revenue and sales criteria can include components like:

Actively Presenting Upselling Options
Crafting Compelling and Personalized Product and Service Descriptions
Presenting Value Through Packaging, Inclusions & Amenities
Personalization & Emotional Selling: Showcasing how our options can fulfill a want.
Factual Selling: Addressing the needs of the guest.

Support The Experience - Overcoming Resistance

Not every guest will say yes to your offer. Including support criteria allows you to evaluate if your team members are attempting to overcome resistance with steps like:

Clarifying Resistance: Asking a resistance question when receiving a no.
Sense of Urgency: Creating urgency to encourage a booking flow.
Discounting & Negotiation
Selling Against OTAs
Selling Against The Competition

Standard Operating Procedures

Evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing training programs and if your team members are implementing your standard operating procedures or brand standards.

What happens if the goals change?
No problem! The hotel industry is dynamic. Just let us know about your need goals, and we will update your criteria to match.

Call Types

Choose any call type. Our hotel mystery shopping program is flexible and adapts to shifting focus areas. You don’t have to stick to one scenario type! You can include general inquiries, confirmations, cancellations, information, or matching OTA calls! The choice is yours and included in the program fees.

Telephone

Are your reservations team presenting values, qualifying the caller, upselling, and overcoming resistance? Our telephone hotel mystery shopping will give you some crucial details!

Virtual Shops

Email, Online & Text Mystery Chat! We can't ignore how virtual communication is a part of our hotel sales and service environment. Let's measure how well the team is doing online, and make some improvements!

Inquiry

Have a caller call into your hotel, spa, or casino and inquire about a room, ask a question, or request information. In this call type, the caller will not purchase at the end.

Confirmation

What information is being collected and provided when a caller says yes? A confirmation and sale call evaluates your confirmation standards.

Cancellation

Are you agents attempting to overcome buyer remorse when they inquire about cancellation? A cancellation inquiry evaluates your cancellation standards.

Appointment

A spa or activity appointment during a stay is integral to a stay experience. Listen to how well your in-house teams promote, upsell, and provide service.

Concierge

Does your concierge provide in-depth, proactive information or give the minimum? Listen to a concierge and information request to hear what happens.

Refund

What happens when a guest inquires about a refund when they are inside the cancellation policy? A refund inquiry evaluates how well your agents handle potential conflict and refund requests.

Complaint

Complaints happen from stay experiences, policies, or service experiences. Understand how your agents handle incoming complaints.

Call Center

Do you utilize a call center to handle reservations or call overflow? Evaluate if your call center can implement your in-house standards and deliver on their promises of call conversion.

Competition

Is your competition providing a more comprehensive sales experience, beating your prices, or giving compelling logic to overcome resistance? Analyze your competition and develop a better market strategy.

Agent Target Shop

Need to audit a specific team member, shift or department. Need to target specific agents? Not an issue! Book a target shop, and we will keep trying until we reach the desired agent.

Custom Profiles

Tailored scenarios. Our professional secret shopper actors mimic your typical customers using the profile details you provide us.

Call Display

We can customize what shows up on your call display to match your typical customers.

Personality

Not all customers are nice! Pick the personalities that you would like us to portray.

Actions

Do you need the caller to ask specific questions, be resistant, or reference a past purchase? We can make it happen!

Managed Shoppers

We manage and train our shoppers and do not outsource your trust in us!

Random Schedule

Our shops are randomize by our computer system and covers all shifts and days of the week. (Unless you tell us otherwise!)

Target Shop

Need to evaluate a specific team member? Tell us their schedule, and we will make it happen (additional fees apply).

Fair Auditing

Our auditors are also kept in the dark about your assessment criteria. Once the audit is complete, the results are sent to an independent trainer, who scores all the calls and virtual audits for your hotel. This way, we can ensure the scoring is consistent!

Modern Features

Hotels love inclusions, so here you go! We offer more than just a checklist of completed skills with our feature-packed services. Don’t worry about paying for add-ons! We have included all this fun stuff for free because we love you!

Call Recording

With your permission, we record all of our mystery shopping experiences so you can review the results with your team members. Nothing beats being a fly on the wall!

PDF, Email and Text Message Alerts

We craft a PDF result report summarizing what happened and providing tips for improvement. Notifications are sent to your managers and learners for review.

24/7

Our audits can take place around the clock, 365 days per year!

Grade

Tone

Compare

History

Trainer Tips

Grade

Based on your agent's performance and the criteria you've selected for your hotel, our mystery shopping report will calculate an overall skill grade.

Tone

Success is not only about the steps you take, but also about your intentions and attitude. Our mystery shop forms highlight both tone and attitude.

Compare

Are you staying ahead of the competition? Discover how your performance stacks up against similar players in your industry with our insightful comparison of results!

History

Service consistency is key to success! Our reports shine a spotlight on your historical data, empowering you to uphold your high standards.

Trainer Tips

We don't just give a checklist of achievements. We help you improve. Our training experts will reveal a"quick win" that makes implementing change a breeze!

Web-Based Reporting

Access data and reporting using our cutting-edge and beautifully designed web-based reporting hosted by salesforce.com.

Select Steps

Our checklist or “true/false” type of scoring is a simple way to provide feedback and keep your assessments uncomplicated. Check yes for completed, or leave blank for missed.

Focus Steps

Our Focus Step will concentrate on a single concept and provide more in-depth scoring and feedback to help your team members grow. Focus areas can include:
Upselling, Loyalty, Personal Connection, Overcoming Resistance, Qualifying, Tone and more!

Focus Steps

Coaching Support

Total Access. We provide your learners and managers with access to their results through our online app and report notifications. Once they review the coaching report they can contact one of our coaches with questions.

Today 15:16

Hey, Jane! You just scored 87.65% on your recent Oculus call! Congratulations! Click this link to review.

Notifications

We text and email the audit results with a link to review reports. Managers will receive additional notifications, including 100% alerts, 3-attempts, 100% coaching alerts, and extended wait times.

Conversations

Learners are encouraged to direct message a trainer with questions to help develop their skills immediately!

I don’t understand how I can overcome price resistance when they are looking on Expedia! Any tips?

Delivered

One-on-one practice with a live expert coach!

Working in a hotel requires a lot of knowledge and takes a lot of practice. Why not speak with an expert coach over the phone to practice those service and sales skills? These one-on-one training opportunities will help increase your hotel's ROI in the mystery shopping program!

Trade your call credits in for one-on-one coaching.

Expert hotel training courses on demand.

Include webinars or in-person sessions on customer service, sales, or sensitivity training to support your mystery shop program.

Add Training

Proven Results

87% of oculus hotel customers are top 10 and above performers on tripadvisor.com

Trust us with your hotel training. Our actionable mystery shopping results facilitate more positive reviews from your guests! Don’t just take our word that our hotel mystery shopping and training works. The proof is in the numbers! We assessed six clients over 6,000 times for a decade, and the results speak for themselves.