'Mystery guests' haunt hotels.

Hotel chains are hiring spies to measure staff and management performance, but they are not the James Bond type. They are regular guests, except they get paid to gorge themselves on room service and run bellboys ragged. "Mystery shoppers are an effective tool for measuring customer service quality in the hospitality industry," explains Carl Braunlich, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Department of Restaurant, Hotel, Institutional and Tourism Management.

Measuring performance in the service industry is difficult because services are produced and delivered simultaneously, with no opportunity for inspection beforehand. "It's different from a manufacturing setting where you have a way to assess your product before it goes to the consumer. In the service industry, you don't know how good you are until it's on the table, so to speak." To solve the problem, most hotel and restaurant chains are paying professional shopping firms to infiltrate their establishments regularly.

"Comment cards, customer complaints, and letters to management are other ways to measure service quality, but what you typically get with these is responses from guests who are either really angry or really happy. You don't get an accurate picture of how the average guest would feel about the service in the restaurant or hotel. Mystery guests are paid to be the average guest." They aren't necessarily people with restaurant or hotel management experience, but people who have a keen sense of observation and are able to put to memory the establishment's service performance standards.

The process usually begins with market research to determine aspects of service that are most important to the customers and guest of a particular establishment. This research yields a detailed checklist of service performance standards. Each item is ranked according to its important. For example, greeting a guest at the...