Hospitality Evaluation + Guest Experience
Insight into what’s happening at every level.
Traveling through Europe and the Americas, PDE Hospitality routinely stress tests luxury hospitality on Air, Land and Sea. Our firm crawls every detail and client-facing service to ensure standards are met and to raise the level of luxury experience.
Whether you’re an airline, hotel, restaurant or cruise, we not only make sure your product and brand demonstrates it’s full value, but also help it to thrive in your market segment. We bring extensive experience and professionalism to every establishment and will customize our support to your individual needs and concerns.
Contact Us
info@pdehospitality.com
About Us
Our founder has had a keen focus on hospitality and the entire guest experience for the past 20 years starting as a young table server for foreign leaders and dignitaries at the historic and affluent Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, steps away from The White House. Since then, he has worked on rendering fully immersive experiences, hosting and consulting on various projects including a painstaking re-creation of Truman Capote’s iconic Black & White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York to two United States’ Presidential Inaugurations in Washington, DC.
We have experience with luxury hospitality around the world and continue to increase our portfolio every year to include new destinations. We’ve covered establishments in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, Peru, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Morocco, Greece, Cuba, and the United States, evaluating some of the most recognizable names in hospitality including the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, Le Meurice in Paris, France, the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Italy, the Hotel de Coronado in San Diego, California, the Shangri-La The Shard in London, England and the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski in Havana, Cuba.
We also avidly follow restaurants in particular, candidates for a Michelin Star as well as established Michelin Star restaurants including Daniel by Daniel Boulud in New York, Petrus by Gordon Ramsay in London and Restaurant Le Meurice Alain Ducasse in Paris.
Our Philosophy
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In today’s environment when the entire hotel industry is under pressure to achieve more tangible results against less expensive market disruptors like AirBNB and VRBO, standard luxury service quality and customer satisfaction no longer dictate customer retention. While these have been traditional measures of guests’ experiences, they no longer drive customer commitment or loyalty.
Hotels are no longer simply a place for lodging, rather they’re expected to be resorts, self-contained developments that can be destinations in thei own right.
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Today, “the experience” which encompasses the decor, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, and the interactions has begun to take precedence. Customer delight focuses on a customized joyful experience created from the moment the guest comes into any kind of contact with the establishment until the moment they leave. Customer delight involves interactions and behaviors that both satisfy the guests and create pleasure for the guests.
Management must become more focused on outcomes, emotional connections, loyalty and subjective feedback.
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There exists a strategic link between company performance and customer satisfaction, which shapes both guests’ intention to return and their word-of-mouth recommendations.
In today’s service sector, guests expect an experience; those experiences then shape distinct economic offerings which in turn drive consumer demand and consequently, customer satisfaction. Service standards, which provide formal expectations for interactions between front-line employees and guests, ultimately govern both structured and informal interactions between guests and firm’s personnel.
Understanding subjective review and leaning into offering desirable experiences influence customer delight and directly affect guests’ commitment to the firm over the entire span of their lifetimes.
Methodology
Why we’re different
Different brands, establishments and/or products have different concerns. While we do have our own proprietary individual points of assessment similar to other mystery audit organizations, our reports also evaluate ALL points included in global standards that directly assign ratings, recognition, plaques etc. to restaurants and hospitality establishments
We find this approach to be less fragmented, more relevant, more consistent, more useful and a great deal more comprehensive for management than other reports
Stars, Rosettes, Diamonds
It may be surprising to learn that there is no single global standard to determine Stars, Rosettes or Diamonds. Instead there are many different standards by country, continent and company. Without an accepted global standard, there are several organizations that evaluate and assign their own metrics to their own ratings which have become widely accepted as assessors of hospitality. The main ones are:
AAA (United States / Global)
AA (United Kingdom)
Forbes Travel Guide (United States / Global)
HotelStars Union (some of Continental Europe)
But there are always other entrants such as newly minted Michelin “Key”. Our report which includes over 1,600 individual points of assessment also captures the queries of these 4 widely accepted ratings organizations and computes what their valuation would be of the establishment, restaurant, or product thereby giving management a clear valuation of how they measure up to the standards of each of the “Big 4”
Areas of Evaluation
Exterior:
General Curb Appeal
Building Structure & Design
Landscaping
Main Entrance
Interior:
General Vibe (Decor style & Ambiance)
Free Floor Space
Furniture Quality & Design
Guest Services Area
Concierge
Illumination
Seating Layout
Decorative Enhancements
Disabled
Connective Technology
Elevator
Corridors
Exercise Facility
Bar / Lounge
Restaurant(s)
Breakfast Area
Restrooms
Signage Throughout Property
Sundries & Shops
Swimming Pool
Spa
Security
Annex
Library
Event Space
Workspace
Guest Room:
Vibe (Decor / Style)
Door(s)
Bed(s)
Bed Linens
Bed Pillows
Bed Mattress
Free Floor Space
Furniture Quality & Design
Illumination
Mirror(s)
Seating Layout
Storage / Shelving
Window(s)
Television Type & Placement
WiFi
Coffee/Tea/Beverages
Instructionals
Flexible, Usable Surfaces
Ventilation
Decorative Enhancements
Telephone
Bathroom:
Vibe (Decor / Style)
Vanity Area
Free Floor Space
Illumination
Mirror(s)
Care
Shower Curtain / Door
Shower Fixtures
Toilet
Towels
Tub/Shower Surround
Web Services
Pre-Arrival Services
In-Person Booking Services
Arrival Services
Check-In Services
Luggage Services (Check-In)
Guest Requests
Room Cleaning
Laundry
In-Room Dining
Concierge Services
Turndown Services
Engineering Services
Luggage Services (Check-Out)
Check-Out Services
Departure Services
Miscellaneous Services
Bar / Lounge Services
Restaurant(s) Services
“Businesses which utilize mystery shopping programs for market research experience an average growth over 10%.”
– Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA)
Initial Full Report
£865 GBP OR All Hotel Charges
Our Initial Full Report includes:
Over 1,600 individual assessment criteria points
Objective Criteria: AAA, AA, FTG, HU
Subjective Criteria: See “Our Philosophy”
Extra comments on individual criteria as necessary
Narratives on salient details and/or relevant points of concern
Final calculation of Star, Rosette, Diamond Rating
Our Initial Full Report WILL NOT include descriptions or names of any staff member that we find to be underperforming. The responsibility lies on senior management to correct junior management, training, process and/or behavior
Follow-Up Full Report
£1,050 GBP OR All Hotel Charges
Our Follow-Up Full Report includes another Full Report as above. If there are any specific items, services, or departments to be reviewed or questions that management wants to answer or address let us know and we will pay special attention to them.
On Request: Our Follow-Up Full Report WILL include descriptions and/or names of staff members that we find to be underperforming. This gives management time to calibrate between an Initial and a Follow-Up as well as address individual staff members as needed.
Subsequent Full Report(s)
£465 GBP AND All Hotel Charges
Our Subsequent Full Report includes another Follow-Up Full Report again as above.
On Request: If management is looking to target specific staff members for review in order to improve and re-train we can arrange targeted reviews if we’re provided with their schedules and assignments ahead of time.
On Request: We can provide a complete training curriculum and/or rubric for areas of concern including training methodologies, instructions for practical exercises and clear deliverables that must be met to demonstrate understanding and retention.
On Request: We can provide a 59 second (max. length of Instagram Stories clips) establishment-appropriate social media short video compatible with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts exhibiting the establishment, various features and/or product to be used at-will or as-desired.
Why you need a mystery guest program:
Management must have visibility to what’s going on at the customer level. Quality checks and quality control must be performed aggressively in order to ensure a truly luxury product is being rendered for the guest.
PDE Hospitality gives you access to the raw material and impressions. Many mystery audit companies take the raw reports from their shoppers, edit them down, standardize, formalize, and re-write them. Big hotelier corporations do the same, editing their own reports and only disseminating certain content down the pipeline. We firmly believe that on-site Senior Management must have full visibility to the raw material. We work through word-of-mouth referral. If you like our work we’re very grateful when you connect us with others.
The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), reported that shoppers conducted over 8.1 million mystery shops in 2004, and that businesses which utilized mystery shopping programs for market research experience an average growth over 10%. Historically hotel managers have focused on more passive tools to measure guests services (eg. comment cards and customer satisfaction surveys). Currently however, managers in the hotel industry are more frequently employing mystery shopping as a continuous quality tool: (1) to refine service processes and procedures, (2) to measure customer satisfaction with services and the extent to which employees follow designated standards (3) to aid in the service training of employees (4) to measure hotel customer facility experience and (5) to measure service quality.
86% of lodging facilities utilize mystery shopping to measure guests’ satisfaction with hotel services.
FAQs
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Most ratings agencies have minimum requirements for their ratings tiers. For example a AAA 3-Diamond rating minimum television size is a 40 inch flat panel. That is to say that a 39 inch television would not meet AAA’s minimum criteria for a 3 Diamond rating. 4 Diamond rating minimum is a 43” flat panel. A 5 Diamond rating minimum is MORE than a 43 inch flat panel. How strict is AAA on their minimums if everything else is at a 5 Diamond standard? Our guess is: not really that strict. But we don’t know. Regardless, it’s certainly pertinent information for management, particularly if the establishment is going to be upgraded or refurbished
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Yes! For example: “Ergonomically adjustable bed system on demand”. This is a Hotelstars Union point of evaluation. It does not count towards their minimums but it does count toward their award point system, by which they calculate their final rating. We don’t see many luxury establishments that pass this particular criteria but since it is a point of evaluation, you should be aware. And it does apply in other cases like a Business class or First Class overnight flight where an adjustable lie-flat seat/bed would be a rational expectation
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Yes! While we have over 1,600 criteria points in total, we only share points of failure “F”. Otherwise our reports would be over 60 pages long!
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Don’t forget we also evaluate Michelin Star restaurants as well as restaurants that would like to gain a Michelin Star. Therefore our criteria may seem a little intense or excessive. We give you visibility to the issues. Taking action is always up to management.
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Yes. We have all those criteria as well and are willing and available to do a more comprehensive audit, reviewing licenses, permits, security procedures, back of house processes, building code checks etc. However, to do so would involve us revealing ourselves to the Front-Of-House staff and that always changes their interactions with us, particularly when we’re known to focus more on the guest experience
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Yes! For example, AA has a minimum requirement for 2 Star establishments of “Writing table or equivalent such as substantial flat surface or desk providing sufficient free space for practical use with mirror adjacent”. The key part of that point is “with mirror adjacent”. If everything else is there but there is no mirror adjacent, then that point fails. Is it a critical point of failure? We would say “no” but in order to get an accurate calculation for an AA rating to present in our reporting we must assess the point. It’s always Management’s prerogative on whether or not to take action
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Sample: Narrative
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Sample: 5 of 13 Criteria for Guest Bathroom
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Sample: Full Criteria of Turndown Service
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Sample: Report
Get in Touch
We’re looking forward to working with you, helping you reach your goals and ensure that you’re putting your best foot forward -