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by Ryan Vagabundo
Thanks to Perry Quan for the photo
If you're a perpetual (or at least frequent traveler), no doubt there's been some point that you've been loafing around in your hotel room and thought, "What if I could get paid to do this? Like, be a mystery shopper for hotel rooms? Write up reviews and get my stay paid for, maybe even make some money at it?"
The good news first: this is an actual job!
Now the bad news: it's pretty hard to get into.
Mystery Shopping Companies
Mystery shopping is something will probably cover in more detail here in another post at some point since it's a casual, nomad-friendly job. But to give it as quick a summary as possible, there's all these third-party companies that major chains and stores contract out to so they don't have internal conflict-of-interest issues, and the people that work for them go undercover in the store to basically evaluate the service, cleanliness, stock, etc.
It's mostly thought of in terms of retail, but there's mystery shop companies that do business with hotel chains as well. The Mystery Shopping Providers Association, basically the biggest central interest group & B2B directory for the industry, says there are about 30,000 total hotel mystery shoppers active in the United States, hired by a number of different mystery shopping companies. These companies advertise their services pretty openly, you can find a bunch just by Googling for "hotel mystery shopping companies" or any semantic variation; some examples at the top of the list of results include:
You can probably find tons more by plowing through search results, but if you're interested in applying, check to make sure they actually operate in your area as most of them aren't present in all 50 states.
So, What Are The Prerequisites?
This is the tricky part.
Most of these companies offering hotel mystery shopping services don't specialize just in that area, they offer general mystery shopping for other industries like retail, grocery, etc.
So they'll have one page for potential mystery shoppers to sign up at, but getting accepted as a mystery shopper with them doesn't mean you're accepted for the hotel assignments. Once accepted you'll have to apply for individual assignments directly, and the ones that are open to just anyone with a pulse are usually the more simple retail or restaurant ones.
This article indicates that, at least for the luxury brands, competition for hotel mystery shops jobs is fierce and prerequisites are pretty high. They look for at least three years of management-level experience in the hospitality industry, plus you have to have a credit line well into the thousands of dollars, since you'll be billing the stays to your own card then getting reimbursed later (to maintain anonymity). There's also a pretty long and rigorous checklist of things to check, so it seems like the stay would actually keep you pretty busy hitting all the requirements.
There's also the ratings agencies, like AAA. This article lets us know that AAA maintains their own staff of incognito hotel raters who actually go undercover to each property and stay there to earn the organization's different levels of diamond rating. Here's a checklist that indicates American Express has a team that does this too.
The articles referenced above were riding along with people who evaluate higher-end hotels, though, places that charge like $200 a night and up. I couldn't find any direct references to this, but lower-end chains like Motel 6 and Days Inn probably get shopped from time to time too, and I would guess the requirements for budget properties may not be as rigorous. If you get in with a mystery shopping company that does hotels and build a reputation doing the more entry-level retail and food stuff first, it might be possible to work up to getting a hotel assignment. Would love more info about that if any readers have actually done this!
Helpful Links:
Here's a thread indicating that condo timeshare companies (like Wyndham) also shop those properties
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