THE MYSTERY DEMYSTIFIED: A MYSTERY SHOPPER'S EXPERIENCE WITH HOTEL SERVICES AND PRODUCTS

Hospitality operations depend greatly on measuring the quality of services and products delivered to their customers, several methods are used, but mystery shopping is the most preferred.Mystery shopping is a process that uses industry professionals to evaluate the products and services offered by hospitality operations through living the actual guest experience and engaging in normal guest - staff encounters and interactions, leading to final evaluations to be reported to concerned management in order to improve the overall performance. The aim of the study was to practically show how mystery shopping is carried out, documented, and used as basis for continuous improvement, in order to achieve this aim the following objectives were acknowledged: a) to show how customers experience and evaluate hotel services and products; b) to propose a mystery shopper interactive scoring observations checklist model.Conclusions regarding mystery shopping practicalities, preparation and applications were reached and shown.