How It Works
You always know what happens next, and who owns it.
Every engagement runs the same arc, whether it is one dinner or a portfolio of hotels. Six steps, each with a date and a name against it.
Private Briefing
A confidential conversation about the house with a principal of the firm. What you are held to, what you already suspect, and what excellent means here rather than in general. You tell us where the worry is.
What you getA defined scope, an evaluator matched to your category, and an engagement built around your actual question.
The Visit
An evaluator who has run your kind of room books like anyone else, arrives unannounced, and scores every touchpoint on the LUXE Method across five dimensions.
What you getScores recorded in the moment, never reconstructed afterward, across logistics, understanding, execution, and emotion.
Scorecard & Priorities
We turn the visit into a hundred-point read a general manager can finish in ten minutes, ranked by what each failure costs you rather than the order it happened. Lost revenue is put in dollars.
What you getA touchpoint scorecard, a severity-ranked issue list, and a clear answer to what to fix first.
Confidential Debrief
A private conversation with the people who commissioned the work. We go through what happened and decide what to do about it. No audience, no presentation, no theater.
What you getAgreed priorities, and a summary you can put in front of ownership or a board without editing it first.
30-Day Corrective Action Plan
We turn the findings into a short plan with names and dates against each item. Where you want the fix built rather than just named, we write the standard and train the team to it.
What you getA thirty-day plan someone owns, plus optional standards and coaching to make it stick.
Re-Audit & Calibration
Months later, unannounced again, we come back and see whether it held. On a busy night nobody was expecting us, which is the only night that proves anything.
What you getA before-and-after read, an honest account of what slipped back, and proof the change took.
Engagement Formats
Three ways to begin.
Most work starts as one of these and grows into another. Each is priced to what it actually takes.
Single Audit
- Cadence
- One-time
- Duration
- 1–3 days on property
- Output
- Report + debrief
One unannounced visit end to end, with a scorecard, ranked priorities, and a thirty-day plan. The fastest way to stop guessing.
Standards & Training Sprint
- Cadence
- Focused window
- Duration
- 14–30 days
- Output
- SOPs + training + re-audit
A short, concentrated build. The SOPs that matter most, the service language, coaching on the floor, and a return visit to confirm it held. Enough to change things without exhausting the team.
Ongoing Program
- Cadence
- Monthly or quarterly
- Duration
- Continuous
- Output
- Re-checks + dashboard + reviews
Recurring unannounced checks, movement tracked over time, corrective actions followed to closure, and a standing review with you. For one property or a portfolio, so the standard stops drifting between good intentions.
You do not have to buy the whole house. We will take the bar, the spa, the arrival, or the wine service on its own, and nothing else.
Questions
What owners and operators ask first.
If yours is not here, write and ask. It does not have to become a meeting.
- Is this mystery shopping?
- No. A mystery shopper is paid by the hour, returns a checklist, and has often never sat in a room like yours as a paying guest. Your evaluator has run a room like yours or spent decades being served in one, looks and behaves like the clientele you already have, and would never be picked out. What comes back is scored five ways: what the team did, how it felt, what it earned, whether it matched your name, and how they handled it when something went wrong.
- How is our confidentiality protected?
- The visit is anonymous, the engagement runs under mutual NDA, the report goes only to the people you name, and nothing is ever published. We are not a ratings body and we do not keep a scoreboard. What we find is yours, and it stays yours.
- How is this different from Forbes Travel Guide, Michelin, or AAA?
- Those are serious instruments and we take them seriously. They measure you against a fixed outside standard, on their calendar, and they publish the result. We measure you against your own standard, on your timing, in confidence. We also score what they do not: the wine margin left on the table, the upsell never made, and how gracefully your team handled it when something broke. Many properties use us between inspections, and to prepare for one. We claim no affiliation with any rating body.
- What do we actually receive?
- A confidential report with an overall score and the LUXE breakdown, a scorecard for every touchpoint, the evening reconstructed in sequence, your strongest moments and your worst ones, what the gaps cost in dollars where we can put a number on it, and a thirty-day plan. Then a private conversation about all of it. Two specimen reports on this site show exactly how it reads.
- What does an engagement cost?
- A single anonymous audit starts at $1,500 with an evaluator matched to your room, or $2,500 when the founder conducts the visit himself, plus what we spend on the meal or the stay. A retail mystery shop costs a few hundred dollars and buys you a shopper and a checklist; the luxury assessment bodies charge several thousand per visit and keep the figure private. We publish ours. Every figure includes the debrief, the priced revenue leakage, and the thirty-day plan, which is where the money comes back. One visit tells you the truth once. A quarterly program tells you whether you are getting better, which is usually the more valuable answer.
- We already evaluate ourselves internally. Why bring in an outside firm?
- Internal eyes are known eyes. A floor performs differently when a manager is standing in it, and every good manager knows that. An anonymous visit removes that distortion. It also produces something an internal review never can: evidence with someone else’s name on it, which is what an owner or a board will actually accept.
- How do we begin?
- You write, and we reply within two business days. We have a short conversation about the property and what is bothering you. If there is work worth doing, we propose one engagement and a price. Then we agree a window, and nobody at the property hears about it. There is no obligation in the first conversation, and no pitch in it either.
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