The decision of the Ministry of Tourism to hire a contractor company for secret visits to hotels in order to evaluate them is impressive. Under customer coverage, they will stay at the hotel and carry out the required checks.
According to an article in the newspaper "o Phileleftheros", the state ministry has already made a preliminary announcement of the tender, which it intends to announce in February.
The procedure will concern the selection of the contractor for "provision of services for the creation and implementation of a comprehensive system for evaluating the quality of services of hotel companies through the conduct of secret visits". The value of the contract is estimated at € 300.000.
According to the tender documents, This contract will control 87 hotel units with 22.770 beds in the province of Famagusta (six are five stars), 37 hotel units with 4.850) in Larnaca beds (among them a five star hotel, 44 hotels with 10.615 beds in Limassol (eight five stars), 30 hotels in Nicosia with a total of 2.980 beds (one five star) and 61 hotels in the province Paphos, with a total of 5.760 beds (12 of five stars).
Who can claim
The project, as provided in the preliminary tender documents, can be claimed by entities that have already successfully completed at least two contracts in the last five years, worth at least € 30.000 each, for the provision of services for the creation and implementation of an evaluation system. either through secret visits or through non-secret inspections in order to evaluate a company active in the tourism sector in relation to the services it provides and with a participation rate of at least 50%.
The "Secret visit" will be conducted by specially trained people (mystery shoppers), who operate and behave as customers of the company and do not reveal their identity.
If a hotel unit or other tourism business is rated as "unsatisfactory" in excess of 15% of the criteria, then the business is subject to loss of the respective ranking points.
The evaluation will be done with specific criteria and a protocol that will be agreed with the Ministry of Tourism, which will be transparent and impartial, according to the documents of the Ministry.
Source: reporter