Want to learn how pairing IntouchCheck® with mystery shopping gave Concept Hotels a complete view of operations while cutting its manual workload in half?
Dive into the full story by watching the video below, or keep reading to uncover more details.
Concept Hotels owns and manages a portfolio of 13 independent boutique properties. The team strives to deliver a feel-good experience anchored in service, style, and great value.
Hospitality is a hands-on business. Concept Hotels leads with that philosophy, and it’s resulted in a thriving portfolio of boutique properties for guests who favor personality and individuality over cookie-cutter hotels. The hands-on approach that brought the business success turned into a hindrance when trying to scale further.
Previously, all checklists for room inspections, preventative maintenance, and regulatory compliance lived in paper printouts or Excel documents. The physical documentation made it difficult to find trends, limiting opportunities to improve internal and external processes.
“The primary challenge was the nature of all the manual work that we were doing, which made it impossible to quickly aggregate and analyze data for the patterns.” — Lindo Perez, Chief Operating Officer, Concept Hotels
Everything also moved slowly. A single room inspection took up to 15 minutes, while internal audits could take eight hours or more. Across all 13 properties, operations audits accounted for nearly 2,500 hours of work per year.
When searching for an inspection and checklist tool, Concept Hotels found the IntouchCheck® platform.
During the demo, the team found IntouchCheck®, Intouch Insight's proprietary inspection and checklist software, easy to navigate, with automated reporting that delivered everything they needed after an audit.
Customer service was another plus.
“From the moment the sales team reached out to me, how dedicated they were, their follow-up skills just made me feel like I was going to be taken care of by their team,” said Concept Hotels COO Lindo Perez
Concept Hotels first adopted IntouchCheck® to digitize its internal audit program, resulting in more consistent reviews and inspections. After more than five years using IntouchCheck®, the company started tracking a new KPI: guest satisfaction. They added Intouch Insight’s mystery shopping program to get a comprehensive understanding of the guest experience.
IntouchCheck® audits internal processes such as SOPs, maintenance, and guest rooms, while mystery shopping shows how guests see the property. Running the two programs together lets the company measure its core values: associate satisfaction, guest satisfaction, innovation, transparency, and accountability.
Mystery shopping also shaped the audit calendar. The team now schedules visits at the beginning of each month to keep coverage consistent across the portfolio.
“We have seen mystery shops score a property higher because of the amazing genuine service they receive, even if they find something not up to their standards at the property level. The service always beats the product.”— Lindo Perez, Chief Operating Officer, Concept Hotels
By replacing paper checklists and spreadsheets with IntouchCheck®, Concept Hotels cut their time expenditure by more than 1,000 hours per year—almost half of their previous 2,500-hour annual workload.
Those reclaimed hours have allowed the operations department to be more strategic and improve coaching for hotel GMs based on audit findings. Guest room inspections now take two or three minutes, and full internal audits take four hours or less. No one prints checklists anymore, and photos attach directly to audit questions so nobody emails pictures around to explain a room issue.
“We have saved over 1,000 hours per year. That is 20 hours per week that our managers can spend effectively working with the hotel team.” — Lindo Perez, Chief Operating Officer, Concept Hotels
As for the partnership and support that Intouch Insight offers, Perez said, “I would describe it as dedication and teamwork. They listen to your request and help you execute it. They really take the time to connect with you and understand what you want to do with the operations of your hotel.”
With measurable data about internal operations from IntouchCheck and objective guest perspectives from mystery shopping, Concept Hotels is more proactive than reactive, and they’re setting data-driven SMART goals across all company properties.
Concept Hotels now depends on the platform. The risk of not having it, Perez says, is losing the data the business runs on.
“If you are looking for a partner to help you be more effective with your operations and give you the data you need to make strategic decisions, then Intouch Insight is the right partner for you,” Perez said.
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