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Luxury venues pay this firm to have people snoop on their services and staff. It's a highly competitive job.

Jim Coyle
Jim Coyle runs the secret-shopper firm Coyle Hospitality. Tabitha Pearson Marshall

  • Jim Coyle started the secret-shopper firm Coyle Hospitality in 1996 after working in a hotel.
  • He now manages 80,000 freelance inspectors, whom he deploys to secretly review establishments.
  • Their jobs including rating staffers, cleanup, and general atmospheres for wealthy clientele.
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The idea to start a secret-shopper firm came to Jim Coyle, now 57, when he was working as a duty manager at a Manhattan hotel. The hospitality-school graduate had just seen his property undergo a standard inspection, carried out by a secret shopper-like road warrior posing as a guest. It tooks weeks to receive the final report, long after issues it raised had potentially dissipated, he told Insider. Worse, it focused mostly on quantitative rather than qualitative feedback. Coyle knew he could do better, so he set out to create a new kind of on-call gumshoe for luxury hotels.

That was in 1996, and almost three decades later, Coyle Hospitality is at the apex of its industry. The company has 80,000 freelance inspectors on its roster and a who's who of hotels as clients — including Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG (owner of Six Senses, Kimpton, and Regent) who have all tapped his team to assess properties, using the company's firsthand reporting to help them improve all aspects of their hotels. Coyle has also broadened his inspection expertise beyond hotels to restaurants, real estate, retail, and even healthcare.

Here's a look at how his company works.

Inspectors don't work for Coyle full-time, and that's what makes them such impressive hotel snoops

Coyle understood instinctively that a road-warrior type — one who lives in hotel rooms and travels for most of the year inspecting them — would grow jaded, lose perspective, and likely cut corners as a result. Part-time snoops on the other hand, he believed, would remain engaged and observant — even more so if they were from groups in a hotel's target market. Five-star travelers know firsthand what five-star service should entail. 

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Coyle decided to deploy ordinary guests as secret shoppers, with a little guidance from his team. His team of freelance reviewers — which consists of mostly white-collar workers from all over the world — can turn reports around in two to three days, rather than take weeks or even a month, making their feedback timely and specific.

Coyle Hospitality receives around 30,000 applications per year for its freelance-reviewer positions and accepts less than 10% of them, using a proprietary algorithm to cull numbers down to those worth interviewing. Certain professions are standouts, Coyle said, like professional musicians. "When the curtain goes up for a show, they know they have to start — it's the same thing when they arrive at a hotel and know they have to perform," he said, adding that their ability to take direction — from Coyle or from a conductor — and innate instinct to be team players are added bonuses.

Teachers, professors, and other kinds of educators are organized and communicate well, as are spouses of those who travel for work — one woman who works for Coyle hopscotches the globe with her corporate-lawyer husband and can easily turn those trips into assignments. Small-business owners, too, are a favorite of his, whatever their sector. "They understand how important guest service is and know things won't be perfect, but can take in the big picture," he said. 

How a would-be hotel inspector earns a gig from Coyle Hospitality

Most hotel locations have four yearly inspections and spend an average of around $10,000 with Coyle. But Coyle won't send a first-time inspector via first class for an extended stay in an oceanfront suite in Hawaii. "They start with simple assignments, which could be calling a reservationist and asking about room types or doing a pick-up order at an exclusive sushi restaurant," he said. Evaluators file reports and receive a score out of 20, much like an Uber rating — Coyle Hospitality tallies communication, accuracy, and other elements to sketch out a profile of their particular skill set.

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When a client hires Coyle for an assignment, he notifies his pool of inspectors. The brief they receive might contain psychographic or demographic requirements to narrow down potential hires. He then waits on them to bid on an assignment. "Let's say we have a three-day stay at a Kimpton hotel. We'll ask them to bid on what they will do that assignment for, and usually we have 80 to 100 bidders," he said. "We have all kinds of performance data on them, so we have an algorithm that sorts out who gets the job. There are lots of factors, and it doesn't always go to the lowest bidder."

The bidding business model keeps costs down, both in terms of fees and travel expenses. Say someone on his roster has booked a trip to Monte Carlo and has already bought a flight — she could look for an inspection gig to cover her accommodation. "The bidding system has virtually eliminated all travel from the cost of a quality inspection — we saved one client over $40,000 in travel that way," he added.

What hotel inspectors look for when rating a room

The basics of an inspection are universal. Human hair anywhere, for example, will score poorly. "The presence of the previous guest is the nuclear bomb," he said. "That will create a visceral response — if you pull open the dresser drawer to find something to write with, only to find a crumpled-up map. It's all about the suspension of disbelief, the idea that this room is yours and ready for you only."

Coyle always counsels to look at the manager at the front desk: Their dress code can be shorthand for the hotel's state.  A general manager in a wrinkled shirt and ill-fitting suit, Coyle said, is a warning that the hotel as a whole is likely to struggle. "The personality of the GM is 90% of what differentiates a hotel."

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On top of these basics, however, each gig will have specific tasks — again, usually relating to the kind of customer they're keen to better understand. Take the luxury resort in Arizona that asked Coyle to find young families to report back on its product. He assigned a woman with a husband and kids from his database. Service was sleek and fast, she reported, but there was a problem on arrival: The bellman whisked the bags out of the car and left them outside on the baggage cart, telling the family to wait for a few minutes. "All the while, her valise is sitting out in the sun, with baby formula in it — when she went to go get it, the man said, 'No, we'll take care of that,' without understanding why. That was an 'aha' moment for the operator, learning that they were leaving bags in the sun."

Another hotel hired the firm to find out why its solo female guests were complaining at checkout at far higher rates than male travelers of a similar age. Coyle sent in a few female executives on his roster, who unearthed three problems: Men were treated more respectfully at check-in, they said, with staff affording them much greater attentive formality; the corridors were poorly lit, too — anxiety-inducing for any woman late at night; and the buzzy bar was worst of all. "The bartenders were high-fiving guys and coming on to the women, so it felt more like a frat party, even though this was a very chi-chi lounge," Coyle said. All it took was for the hotel to do some retraining — and get some brighter bulbs — to reduce negative feedback.

Sometimes Coyle's team uncovers more than just dirty laundry

One five-star hotel came to Coyle because it couldn't ascertain why its upscale spa scored so poorly on checkout evaluations. There was no clear reason, until the inspection team booked a few treatments. One staffer, they found, was the problem. "He was a masseur, making very off-color remarks, like about clients' weights or their back acne. They were so mortified they didn't bring it up with anyone," Coyle said. "He thought he was being helpful, but he was speaking too freely." Coyle said he doesn't know if the hotel terminated that particular staffer, but their contracts include language that expressly forbids clients from using the reports alone as tools for termination.

Occasionally, Coyle's team will expose criminality, like when they uncovered chicanery at a luxury resort in New England. Its business model focused mostly on repeat guests, and it was usually 100% full in tourist season. Such booking levels led regulars to plan ahead, leaving a small deposit for the next season after each stay, and the accounting team at the hotel would automatically roll it over and bill the guest in full at the end of their stay instead of deducting the deposit from this year's tally. This practice startled Coyle's inspection team and they called to request a full refund, as they weren't planning to come back next year. Even after calling to request a refund, it never came — because the manager had been pocketing those deposits for more than two years.

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The pandemic hobbled the travel industry, but Coyle was prepared to pivot

Like many in the hospitality industry, Coyle saw a huge downturn in business as lockdowns and travel slowdowns paralyzed his core industry. "My business revenues went to 10% pretty much in one week, and we consider ourselves lucky. A lot of clients' revenues went to zero," he said. He had already experienced two similar downturns — after 9/11 in 2001 and after the Great Recession — so he was primed to pivot, focusing on building out revenue streams in other sectors in which he'd already dallied during the latter recession. Today, 50% of his clients are hotels, while restaurants form 25% to 30%, and other sectors — like healthcare, retail, and even cannabis startups — round out the rest.

His inspectors have highly transferable skills, he said, which allows them to assess establishments like walk-in medical clinics. They can rate whether they're greeted politely at reception and how quickly they're accommodated. 

One homebuilder, Coyle said, wanted help creating a Four Seasons-like experience at its sales centers. "We created measurements like, 'Is the sales person someone you'd want to have a cup of coffee with?'" Coyle said. He often suggests high-touch businesses like this adopt the 10-in-5 rule, which is standard at hotels: If a guest is within 10 feet, make eye contact with them, and if within five feet, greet them before they greet you.

He isn't worried, either, that user-generated reviews — think Tripadvisor and company — doom his hotel-inspecting business to failure long-term. "The people who go to those sites do not tend to be typical customers," he said. "Affluent people's time is too valuable to go to these boards and spend it writing a complaint."

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