Case Study

We've had the honour of working with Elite Hotels, one of the UK's most distinguished hotel groups for some time now. Their portfolio consists of some of the country's most renowned properties : Tylney Hall, Ashdown Park, The Grand Hotel in Eastbourne and the most recent addition - Luton Hoo is a Grade I listed country house, painstakingly restored and tastefully transformed into a luxury five-star hotel with 18 hole golf course, magnificent spa and more than 1,000 acres of parkland and gardens.

When we first started working with Elite they had a mystery guest programme already in place, but our brief was to tour the properties individually, start with a blank canvas and design a survey which was as generic as possible across the group for benchmarking purposes, but recognising each hotel's uniqueness and individuality. This was quite a challenge considering each property has its own distinct character. However, of great help was the fact that Elite allowed us to use our favoured and most effective method of working, which was to consult in detail not only the management team at their hotels, but the front line too. After all it is the front line which knows the guest best, and if the front line employees can have an input into the standards in the survey themselves, the programme will be so much more effective.

We embarked on a series of half-day workshops at each hotel, listening to and adopting the many ideas of approximately 100 staff in total, and the standards for a thorough mystery guest audit were born. This was not only for a regular series of overnight guest stays, but for walk-in mystery function enquiries and showarounds too. In addition, we carry out almost weekly telephone enquiries for a variety of scenarios. All the calls are recorded, with the recording embedded as a sound file into each of their reports, and summary audio compact discs are produced for training and developmental purposes.

Attention to detail is at the core of Elite's service to their guests, and their mystery guest survey standards are very thorough and detailed in reflecting this. Elite Hotels were keen to use Service Science because we measure a lot more than a check list of whether standards are achieved or not. In addition we measure the degree to which guest expectations are met individually and as a whole. Our reports analyse the skills of their front line staff which enables training and dvelopment to be targeted, and as a result each year Elite's graphs show the desired upward trend.

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