What It’s Like to Be an Undercover Luxury-Hotel Inspector

Mystery shoppers are all around us — road-testing casino buffets, quality-checking car washes. But an elite bunch are tasked with the glamorous-yet-grueling job of sussing out the most luxurious hotels in the world. These hotel inspectors get paid to tour cheese cellars, lounge by infinity pools, and assess the fluffiness of down comforters in cities across the globe. Even in an age in which every influencer can advise on where to stay in Tulum and countless Tripadvisor reviewers can flag which hotels have pubes on pillows, a handful of companies employ full-time inspectors to be professional vacationers. They can’t accept freebies, they can’t reveal who they are, and they get all their expenses covered.

The Forbes Travel Guide, one of the most established raters in the business, employs more than 100 hotel inspectors to grade hotels, spas, restaurants, and cruise ships across what they call “up to 900 objective standards.” Their employees exclusively travel to high-end properties — a private island resort in the Maldives, a $2,500 a night suite at the Aman in Tokyo — and hotels must meet certain criteria, like having a dedicated lounge area where guests can get a drink, to even be considered. We spoke with a Forbes inspector who has spent 20 years vetting accommodations for the wealthiest and most demanding travelers in the world.

What does it take to get this job?
All of us have some type of extensive hospitality background. I worked as a hostess in a restaurant and as a front-desk clerk at a hotel, and I also had some operator work with a small hotel, all of it at a mix of mid-tier and upscale places over the course of a decade. It’s a pretty thorough interview process to become an inspector. I actually had to go to breakfast at a hotel and type up what that would look like if it was an inspection. They gave me all these checkpoints that I would have to look for: Was the host dressed in a clean, well-pressed uniform? Were they well groomed? Did they smile? The staff has to greet the guest within one minute of them arriving at the restaurant. Then once I sat down, how long did it take for the server to approach the table? How long before the meal arrived? Was it hot when it was served? Was it well presented? Obviously, the food has to be flavorful and delicious. And beverages need to be refilled throughout breakfast as well, within one minute of the glass going empty. In the middle of all this, I also had to be examining the rest of the restaurant. Are the tables being cleared properly? Are staff comporting themselves professionally? So you’re taking in a lot of information. I was pretty nervous on that first one.

The hiring manager at the time not only looked at my attention to detail, but also at how well I could articulate those experiences so someone that wasn’t there can feel like they were there. And then I went through extensive training. I’d say the average inspector needs about three to six months of training before they’re out on their own. First I had classroom training for the standards—going through every single expectation, what type of detail is needed. Then there’s on-site training, going to locations with a trainer. And then there’s shadow training where I was shadowed by the training manager as I was filling out the evaluation. And the training doesn’t end. Our standards change. When I first started, there was a standard that timed how quickly a fax could be delivered to the room. You can imagine now that everyone would be identified as an inspector by asking for a fax to be sent to the room.

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at a hotel you’re inspecting?
The very first point of your inspection is actually your reservations call. Is it a strong, clear, friendly greeting with a smile in the voice? Or is it a little hurried or rushed and you can hear other voices in the background, or maybe phones ringing? We are listening to every single aspect to see whether there’s full attention on the guest.

On-site, the inspection starts before you ever step foot in the door. When I arrive at a hotel or restaurant and drive up to the porte cochère, I’m already looking at how the valet and bellmen are standing outside. Let’s say you see the valet leaning on the podium, or you see two bellmen chatting together, and all of a sudden they stand up straight when you pull up to the drive — that’s a standard that would have been missed. We look for that proactive greeting as soon as we arrive at the entrance.

And then what? Does the inspection follow a particular order? 
There’s a series of checkpoints throughout the evaluation. For example, the inspection will involve in-room dining — breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It’ll involve dining at one of the restaurants on the property. We go to the bar and we test the lounge. It could involve a drink at the pool. We also have various phone calls that we’ll make to test a few different aspects of housekeeping. Maybe it’s that we need a forgotten toiletry item, or we need a jacket pressed for an important meeting. Sometimes the room has been so well equipped with every amenity I could possibly think of, down to dental floss and makeup-remover wipes, that I’ve actually had to spill something on my clothes so I could send it down to get cleaned by laundry. A typical inspection, it could be anywhere from two to three nights.

Given that there are so many different departments that we assess, the inspection could be done in a methodical way, but we purposely mix up the sequence of steps because we don’t ever want to identify that we’re doing an inspection.

Give me some examples of the things you’re looking for in those 900-odd standards you’re scoping out. 
There are timing standards. If I make a phone call and it rings more than three times, that’s considered a delay. If I order room service and the order taker quotes us that the dinner will arrive in 30 minutes, they have five minutes before or five minutes after to adhere to that timing standard. As soon as we hang up the phone, we’re timing that. Or say I forgot my toothbrush — if I call down, the team has ten minutes to bring that item up.

On arrival, I’ll go through the guest room, looking at the mirrors in the bathroom to see if they’re spotted or speckled, or if there’s water spots on the faucet. I’ll look at all the surfaces to see if they’re dusty. I’ll check the remote, turn on all the lights, and make sure that everything is functioning because that’s part of what we look for. I look at things like, How do the uniforms tie into the overall décor of the property? What music do you hear as you’re dining? The restaurant menu has to be high quality and aesthetically pleasing. Is it within a leather compendium? Is it high-quality paper? Are there grammatical errors?

It sounds very stringent, but these are the most stringent standards in the industry for a reason. It’s based on not only the service, but how you feel throughout the process, how you’re treated, how well everything is personalized. I know there are some misunderstandings out there that we walk around with a little tool kit with a blue light, like in Ocean’s Eleven. And we do not do that.

I have to be honest: Evaluating a spa sounds like a dream.
That was very appealing to me when I first started. We had just launched the spa ratings, so I was fortunate to do many of those initial inspections. But once again, I’m there for work. I’m not there to fall asleep during a massage. We are up, alert, and constantly thinking about what we’re hearing, seeing, smelling. As I’m evaluating a massage, I’m listening for noise that might be out in the hallway, or what the therapist says when they first start the treatment. How do they describe it? Is it too much talking during the massage, or hardly any information?

Are there any reliable signs of a top-notch luxury hotel? Little things that usually correlate to a great or a subpar experience?
Within seconds, you get a feeling. A hotel that stands out is all about consistency and hypersensitivity to detail. We can usually tell right away that a property has invested not only in their people, but in the FF&E — an industry term for “furnishings, fixtures, and equipment.” Is the lobby arranged so it’s inviting and encourages you to linger? Or are the first things you see fingerprints on a door or chips in the baseboards? Are there papers everywhere on the front desk that can be seen, or is it meticulous? One thing we always look for is a true sense of place. If you walk into a hotel in Hawaii, for example, and it looks like you could be in Dallas, it doesn’t have that. A lot of properties are using scent to draw guests in, and I’ll think, Is that smell consistent with what the identity of the property is? Does it have more of a subtle oceanside scent, or does it have something more rich and exclusive, like you’re stepping into a high-end retail boutique? And then there’s definitely the scent that is trying to cover some things up.

Do you have a cover story you use to maintain your anonymity?
Absolutely. There’s always a lot of preparation in terms of what type of guest I need to be. What’s my story? Who am I visiting? Is that plausible? If I’m at a city hotel and I say I’m there for business, I think about the companies that are at that destination or if there’s a specific convention going on. I’ll take a taxi or Uber to leave the property because I said I was going to a business meeting. I always remember: If this was my vacation, what would I be doing? I go out, I take tours, I sightsee. Looking the part is important. When I’m on the road and visiting properties back-to-back, one of the hardest things is making sure I have the right clothes in my wardrobe. If I’m a business traveler, I don’t want to have flip-flops and casual sundresses out when housekeeping is taking care of the room. Same thing goes for a resort. If my cover story is that I’m going there for my birthday and I’m visiting a friend, I’ll take birthday cards or something and set them out in the room. I don’t purposely put on a disguise at all, but if there was a need, I could be ready for that.

How often are inspectors outed? 
From my end, it’s difficult to say, but I do know that if they’re identified, the evaluation is redone. That can get very expensive. If it happens too often, this probably isn’t the right job for them.

How much do you get paid?
 For senior level evaluators, the range is about $75,000 to $80,000 a year. The entry level is closer to $60,000 to $65,000.

And how many days a year are you on the road?
About 100. It’s possible to do anywhere from three to five evaluations a month. My travel can vary based on the year, but it wouldn’t be unusual to have two trips to Asia, maybe three or four to Europe or the Middle East. Add on that, you know, possibly a few more to the Caribbean. There’s also considerable travel closer to home.

What does it take to be good at this?
There is an incredible amount of typing. And the level of detail is so specific in how we look at these standards. If something is given a “no” on an evaluation, I have to support it. If I said, “The staff member didn’t use my name as I was departing,” there’s a good chance that I would get a call or an email saying, “Well, who was the staff member? And was it everyone you talked to in departure or just the one person?”

If I had to print out my report, it would probably be about 100 pages.

How do you take notes without blowing your cover?
I put things in my phone, but I also take copious notes in a notebook. Not to give away any trade secrets, but I’ve gotten very creative in the past and written in books and on bookmarks. We also take photographs everywhere but the spa. We photograph the room before housekeeping and the room after housekeeping. We take pictures of our food, the drinks, the menus.

Do you purposefully try to be a handful to see how the hotel will manage that?
I’m probably one of the more pleasant guests because we don’t outwardly complain. We don’t set up negative situations to see how team members react. But while I may not complain, it is nice to be able to see how the hotel handles service recovery. I’ve had many, many, many experiences that did not go well, as you can imagine. One time, I was at a property with my husband — the cover was an anniversary trip — and the in-room dining order for dinner was a three-course meal. The server that came into the room tripped over the threshold of the door, and the entire meal spilled all over the floor, glasses breaking. It was just a mess. I got another dinner, but it came about an hour later. There was no extension of any apology afterward.

Has being a hotel inspector affected your desire to travel off the clock?
I love to travel. But it is very hard to turn off the inspector side. I always pay attention to all the things that we look for in an evaluation. Did I say it was a birthday and no one did anything? Was I addressed by name? My standards have gotten very high over the years. Especially when it is my own dime, I’m expecting the best. My kids have gotten really good at evaluating as well.

How does it feel to have gone from working in hotels to being a permanent guest?
Having been on the other side, I know that feeling of, Did I get shopped? Was that just an inspector on the phone? I appreciate the importance of really making sure that the details on my end are right. Staff members’ names go in these reports. This is their livelihood. And I always remember that. There’s a part of our evaluation where we can identify a star staff member, and I love being able to highlight who really stood out.

Have you ever been outed as an inspector?
I have not. I’m just that good.