HGEM has always been a pioneer, even being the first to coin the term ‘mystery dining’ back in 2003 when the company was originally founded as the Mystery Dining Company.
Since then we have continued to seek innovative ways to empower hospitality in a competitive and rapidly changing market and today work with over 5000 restaurants, pubs, hotels and caterers internationally. Scroll through our journey to see past milestones and where we’re heading.
Launch of the GEM Hub. A powerful new platform with custom dashboards, interactive reports and the ability to stream data from different sources. One source of insight about your guest experiences; keeping your managers focussed
We've cooked up an exciting pipeline of new features planned for the GEM Hub and the Mobile App. So watch this space!
We’re always looking to the future. Expect to see lots of innovations in forecasting and responsiveness that build on advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. But hospitality will always be a people business and so will we - it's just that we'll be able to use these 'bots to be cleverer and faster.
We pioneered the use of the term Mystery Dining as a specialist form of mystery shopping; more suited to the deeper levels of interaction that are more common in hospitality than retail
Bye bye paper reports! Back when the internet was young, we pioneered the use of the internet for next-day report completion and delivery
Going global. We’ve been visiting all the international wagamama sites since that time, covering over 40 major cities around the world. In 2017, we also introduced the ability to complete all communications in French as well as English
The aftermath of the smoking ban. We worked closely with pub companies to transform their business model as food became an increasingly important differentiator
Introduction of online reporting. We take it for granted now but, at the time, this broke the mould and enabled managers to gain insights when they chose to rather than when they received reports
Introduced analyst support for clients. We have long recognised that collecting feedback and assessments is only the start; it’s what you then do with it that matters. So custom reporting and interpretation became a core part of our service
Death of the comment card! We began building custom feedback sites to help operators to listen to their guests and track their perceptions
Introduced learning management solutions. This enabled businesses to articulate the connection between the training people receive and the experience they deliver to guests, as well as to engage employees and track their results
Pioneered the use of the term Guest Experience Management. Little used at the time, now many businesses embrace the concept, sometimes even using the job title Guest Experience Manager
Introduction of a support package for major events. Based on our experience with teams on the ground at Royal Ascot providing up-to-the minute intelligence
Development of the GEM Wheel. Used to frame your intended experience, to measure performance against expected standards and behaviours, and to align training with operations
Launch of the GEM Mobile App – a great aid for managers to view results for multiple locations while on the move. And we introduced French as a supported language for completing and communicating visit reports (we visit all European Pret sites weekly)
Many of our people have joined us having worked in the hospitality industry and so it truly has shaped who we are and the way we behave. We understand the pressures and challenges of your teams because we have been there and we’re passionate about supporting you to deliver a great guest experience every time.
At HGEM we are fortunate to have a fantastic community of mystery guests that we try hard to nurture and support as stakeholders in 'empowering hospitality'. In return, they go the extra mile to provide detailed and practical feedback on their experiences.
