Tourism Mystery Shopping

Dave Hughes is now a member of the JKS consultancy team. He has over 20 years experience in destination management and development and marketing roles for local authorities in Kent and Sussex.

His work as an independent consultant has encompassed the production of tourism strategies and visitor economy development frameworks; the preparation of applications to UK and EU funding programmes; organising workshops and consultation exercises with tourism businesses; and the production of brochures to promote local food and drink. Clients have included regional development agencies and tourist boards, county and district councils, regeneration agencies, destination management organisations, management bodies for protected landscapes and local food and drink development and promotion agencies.

Dave’s consultancy Tourism Plus is one of 9 consultancies appointed to the London Development Agency’s (LDA) tourism consultants’ panel in August 2006. Dave Hughes has since then worked on a number of tourism consultancy projects for the LDA. These included joining forces with JKS in 2009 to undertake a mystery shopping survey of the LDA’s London Ambassadors Scheme. This involved ‘mystery shopping’ a selection of 30 of the more than 300 community wardens who had been through the “London Ambassador” training course since its inception.

The brief for the mystery shopping research set out a series of objectives;

• To establish whether the skills and knowledge learnt in the London Ambassador course were being applied on the streets of the capital.

• To take a snap shot of the level of customer service being offered by London Ambassadors to visitors.

• To establish whether the London Ambassador Programme was providing a useful additional resource to London’s visitor welcome.

• To provide London Ambassadors with feedback on their level of service.

• To establish data by which the scheme’s progression could be compared against in the lead up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and compared to other relevant sector scores.

Tourism Plus and JKS worked together to devise a mystery shopping exercise which focused on assessing the first impressions given by the Ambassadors, along with their attitude and range and depth of knowledge. JKS then organised the mystery shops and provided the results to enable a comprehensive report to be produced for the client. The LDA has since used the findings to help to plan further refinement to the Ambassador scheme and its expansion across London.