What do Lucknam Park, Lancaster London, The Belfry, ISS Integrated Solutions, Esk & Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust have in common? This year, they are all winners, or employers of winners, of Hospitality Assured Awards.
Hospitality Assured is the quality standard created by the Institute of Hospitality specifically for customer facing businesses. It encourages businesses to look at their own operation from the customer’s perspective and to see where improvements should be made to benefit the business. This is done by looking at how businesses score against the criteria in Hospitality Assured’s nine step standard.
This year’s Hospitality Assured Award winners were recognised during the Institute of Hospitality’s Annual Lunch at London Lancaster on 29 May 2013.
Winners include hotel, resort, facilities management and public catering sectors
The winners cover a wide cross-section of the hospitality industry, including the hotel, resort, facilities management and public catering sectors. The five awards comprise a mixture of earned awards (the highest scoring organisation and newcomer) and those selected by a distinguished panel of judges.
The judges were Ufi Ibrahim FIH, chief executive of the British Hospitality Association; Andrew Lockwood FIH, associate dean and Forte professor of hospitality management at Surrey University; and Peter Ducker FIH, chief executive of the Institute of Hospitality.
Highest Scoring Organisation: Lucknam Park Hotel & Spa
Lucknam Park Hotel & Spa has clearly maintained its position on its journey to excellence. A number of changes and improvements have been made, including the introduction of a new kitchen vegetable garden, many new spa treatments and revised brasserie and breakfast menus.
The assessors were impressed by the high standards of service, real guest focus, positive atmosphere, the enthusiasm, commercial attitude and the commitment to excellence in all the areas they visited. There is strong team-working and an ethos of co-operation and integration throughout the hotel. The structure of management and team meetings is clearly highly effective within the business, and the senior management are very involved with the team and with the guests.
Highest Scoring Newcomer: Lancaster London
Across all the steps of the Hospitality Assured Standard the assessors found clear evidence of activities, processes and procedures which focus upon high standards of customer service and the achievement of excellence in business practices.
Key themes of a culture change at the hotel have been the empowerment of all colleagues, first class communication structures, continuous innovation and improvement, measurement of customer feedback culminating in the Net Promoter scoring process, and a structure of consistent operating standards and procedures. All these themes add up to the customer promise of ‘We Always Care’ (WAC) which is applied both internally and externally.
Most Innovative Use of the Standard: The Belfry
The Belfry has embarked upon a multifaceted strategy of customer service excellence based upon the total engagement of its people. The Hospitality Assured (HA) programme has been employed as a core part of this process and seeking HA accreditation is seen as recognition for the whole team of the efforts that have been made.
One of its most striking initiatives has been the use of the four Be’s which are the core values – be successful; be careful; be you; be guest-focused. The four are colour coded and relevant performance measures and planned activities are assigned to one or more of them. To support the core values, a very comprehensive and inclusive internal meetings structure has been developed, including an impressive staff representative group called the Belfry Board.
Champion of the Year
Winner: Harvey Morris, ISS Integrated Solutions, Telefónica UK
Harvey Morris’s nomination read: “As a team, we are extremely proud of Harvey’s dedication and significant involvement over the past two years in promoting Hospitality Assured, and for leading the Bath Road facilities team on our journey to Accreditation.
We were successfully accredited in January 2013 and already Harvey is encouraging other site teams to think about the wealth and value Hospitality Assured can add to our further commitment in delivering service excellence.
His enthusiasm has meant that all site teams within the Telefónica estate want to learn more and use what Harvey has implemented as best practise and that’s because we have our very own Hospitality Assured Champion!”
Champion of the Year: Short-listed
Ernest Grainger, Oxford Brookes University
Reynaldo Guin-o, EICC
Hywel Jones, Lucknam Park Hotel & Spa
Team of the Year
Winner: Hotel Services Team, Tees, Esk & Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust
Tees, Esk & Wear Valleys Trust provides mental health services to patients in the north-east of England. The Trust’s hotel services team support the clinical services by providing housekeeping, domestic, portering, catering and reception services to some 150 properties (over 1,000 inpatient beds).
The 2012 Hospitality Assured assessment stated that “the involvement of the whole team in preparing for and supporting the Hospitality Assured assessment was impressive.”
In order to achieve re-accreditation to the standard in 2012 the team worked to implement a number of initiatives. Of particular note is the support given to 370 housekeeping staff to develop IT skills despite a large number having no previous experience of using computers.
This initiative allowed the team to move its mandatory training requirements from delivery by face-to-face training to e-learning. By doing so, it increased its staff skills, achieved its target of 95% of staff being up to date with mandatory training and saved £10,000 per year in travelling expenses and £30,000 in staff time.
Team of the Year: Short-listed
Royal Holloway University of London Campus Services
Stoke Mandeville Stadium
The Møller Centre, Cambridge