November 2002, V. 4, No. 3

Spotlight on Customer Loyalty: Starwood Hotels and LRA Worldwide Partner to Build a Comprehensive Quality and Brand Assurance Program

by Dominic Romano, Senior Consultant

Everyone can certainly agree that 2002 was a challenging time for the hospitality industry. Hospitality executives faced many difficult decisions and tough choices had to be made to keep companies on an ambitious path toward the future. A tough and dedicated team from Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide met this challenge and moved forward with one of the most ambitious global quality programs in the industry today. This issue of The Loyalty Leader highlights the remarkable success story of Starwood Hotels and Resorts in the development and implementation of a Global Brand Assurance Program that is state-of-the-art, responsive, flexible, and focuses on what distinguishes its brands.

	Leading this initiative, Norman MacLeod, Executive Vice President, Sheraton gave the charge to build the ultimate audit and brand assurance program. “We have advanced beyond measuring if hot food is hot and cold food is cold,” said MacLeod.“Our goal is much more ambitious, we need to learn whether a property is helping to build our brand equity.” MacLeod assembled a team that included brand operations, standards team members, members of the franchise community, market research, operation experts, and LRA Worldwide. MacLeod’s vision was to capitalize on the wealth of resources available from the brand programs in place from 2001, yet his direction was to “start with a blank sheet of paper” to stimulate creativity and “build a dynamic program.”
	Starwood executives began with a formidable goal: to unite quality programs into a single platform and to clarify brand standards for each of the Starwood Brands. The challenge involved creating and revising standards for the Sheraton, Westin, Four Points by Sheraton, The Luxury Collection and W Hotels brands as the first step. Standards were examined for clarity and re-engineered to meet the current brand criteria or targeted customers. We set out to “prioritize standards that align with our brand plots,” points out Sue Brush, Senior Vice President, Westin, a key leader of this project. “Our goal was brand consistency and customer loyalty. After looking at our history, we saw Brand Standards no longer aligned with training, operating procedures and design requirements. This was a unique opportunity to align the forces that contribute to a brand’s success.”
LRA Worldwide was retained to help move this initiative forward. “The challenge was to start with a clean slate, solicit diverse views, employ new technology, and learn from our past efforts,” said Dominic Romano, Senior Consultant of LRA. “Not only was this a rare opportunity to be creative, we also were part of an open-minded team. We questioned the practices from six brands and came up with the best of the best.”
	This opportunity allowed the introduction of a common scoring system. “We needed to create a standard weighting process which properly identifies and measures the critical components of brand success,” explains Chuck Brown, Corporate Director, Brand Operations NAD Starwood Hotels & Resorts. “We needed to balance the scoring philosophy into a logical, comprehensive platform.” Chuck had the arduous task of coordinating this development project from start to finish and was the principle liaison between Starwood executives and LRA's technology and development teams.
The Brand Assurance Program is a comprehensive hotel audit conducted by experienced LRA Consultants that evaluates a hotel’s delivery of key services, maintenance of brand standards, effectiveness of various training programs, and facility cleanliness and conditions. The Brand Assurance program provides data on a property’s compliance with those brand standards defined as customer loyalty drivers, standards that support each brand’s definition, and clearly measures each hotel’s commitment to those brand standards defined as “Essential.” The program offers management at all levels a powerful tool to help improve the quality of the operations and to chart the growth of each Starwood brand. The Brand Assurance Program has been well received by corporate staff and General Managers from corporate owned and franchise operators. One hundred days after the launch of the program in North America, review meetings and conference calls were conducted. “We were delighted to receive the overwhelmingly positive feedback and several excellent suggestions for future enhancements,” stated Dominic Romano. “This program was created with the extensive participation of Starwood decision-makers representing several disciplines and geographic areas, that is its greatest strength.” He continued, “Starwood and LRA share the vision that building brand equity is not a function limited to a small group in any company; it must become an key element of a company’s culture.” To achieve this goal the Brand Assurance program incorporates several key associate-training initiatives, measures their effectiveness, and provides powerful data to plan future training efforts. This information is shared via a specially-designed interactive website that places real-time information on the desks of Starwood management around the world. After a successful launch in North America, the vision moved forward around the globe to the Starwood International Divisions. The common platform was flexible in design to allow for unique regional needs and divisional differences in standards. A common language was maintained across brands and across divisions to maintain clarity and consistency. A similar approach was taken toward consultant training. LRA services the Starwood Account with a dedicated brand team of consultants based in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. “We have an extraodinarily talanted, multi-lingual group with diverse and accomplished backgrounds,” Romano explained. “With this abundant talent it seemed short-sighted to assign our consultants to only one division. Starwood is a multi-brand global company catering to an international clientele. We felt we should take a similar global approach when assigning our consultants and performing our evaluations.”
	Benefits of the Brand Assurance Program development reached well beyond North America. The Starwood Latin America Division utilized this format to update their divisional standards. Oscar Gomez Commelli, Director of Standards & Quality, Latin America, designed specific goals for the division into the program. Says Gomez Commelli, “ the Brand Assurance Program is a critical tool in the Latin America Division Guest Retention Tactics Strategy because, in that way, we may anticipate guest satisfaction by evaluating the brand core standards of services and facilities and the corrective action taken over deficiencies detected. On the other hand, it is also the chosen tool to create loyalty among same brand hotels through services and facilities uniformity and consistency."
In Asia Pacific brand assurance efforts are under the direction of David Shackleton, Senior Vice President and Area Managing Director. Together with the Asia-Pacific Division’s sales and marketing, food and beverage and training leaders, LRA tailored the audit process to evaluate implementation of each department's latest programs. David Shackleton explains, “This year we asked LRA to broaden their scope and to evaluate several new divisional initiatives. This service has provided the General Managers and the Division with a comprehensive understanding of how these initiatives have taken hold within the hotels. Working with LRA in this way we have been able to measure the effectiveness of these new programmes.”
	During the last year Starwood has merged the Europe and the Africa and Middle East Divisions. Developing new brand audits has allowed the division to use the process to launch the newly-created division on common goals. These efforts are accompanied by a divisionwide effort to develop common standards that function in a vast multi-cultural environment while maintaining a global brand image. In Europe, Africa and the Middle East, LRA closely partners with Starwood’s global Six Sigma initiative. Even Fyrdenberg, Vice President for Six Sigma in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, directs standards development and brand assurance efforts in the region. He reports, "Branding is all about consistency in product and service delivery. This has since the beginning been one of the key focal areas for our Six Sigma effort. The global partnership of LRA through the Starwood Brand Assurance Program gives us solid information about what part of our customer delivery we do well and in which areas we need to focus our efforts in order to improve."
“As partners with Starwood Hotels and Resorts, our team recognizes the tremendous effort and accomplishment that follows from proper delivery of brand-building strategies, comments Robert Rush, President of LRA Worldwide. “The payoff in customer loyalty, guest satisfaction and operational efficiencies will continue to unfold. Our congratulations to this most diligent team on building a winning program.”

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LRA Worldwide Introduces:
SurveySmart^SM: Are Paper-based and Telephone Surveys Becoming a Thing of the Past?

In their quest to gather insightful customer feedback, many companies have historically distributed paper-based surveys or conducted telephone surveys. While these methodologies have served their purpose over the years, they are often slow, expensive and subject to manipulation.

With 143 million Americans (about 54% of the population) now using the Internet, web-based customer satisfaction surveys are growing in popularity. In keeping with the shift towards the web, LRA Worldwide has successfully implemented an innovative new web-enabled tool called SurveySmart^SM . This innovative service is LRA’s leading-edge, Internet-based, real-time customer satisfaction survey tool that asks the right questions, dramatically improves response rates over more traditional survey methods and provides immediate feedback and results.

Some of the many valuable benefits of SurveySmart^SM include:

• Less expensive than paper and telephone surveys
• Flexible approach, can easily customize/change surveys with no printing costs
• Automatic e-mail alerts to notify you of dissatisfied customer responses
• No “stuffing the ballots”
• A variety of analytical tools, including trending and regression analysis
• A “Customer Loyalty Index” which reports you how “secure” and “engaged” your customers are with your brand

If your organization has been thinking about changing the way it gathers customer feedback, why not learn more about SurveySmart^SM. Turn to LRA to “out-smart” your competition. Use SurveySmart^SM to help enhance your organization’s “Top Box” performance, and increase revenue, profits and market share. Please contact Debra Andrews, dandrews@lraworldwide.com, to schedule a one-on-one, Internet-based demonstration of this specialized service.

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Rob Rush, President & CEO of LRA Worldwide, was invited to make a presentation on brand excellence and customer loyalty to the Limousine and Chauffeured Transportation Industry during their Annual Conference held in Boca Raton, Florida in October. The LCT Leadership Summit was attended by many of the industry’s largest luxury transportation operators including BostonCoach, Carey International, Dav-El and Empire International, as well as many smaller companies. Rob spoke with the group about the many challenges facing their business, and shared his views on surviving the downturn and building a better brand. His remarks follow:

Luxury transportation is a tough-sell in the current marketplace. For corporations, it might be the easiest item to eliminate from the travel budget. Like other sectors that have been significantly impacted by the travel slowdown, the limousine industry faces a variety of challenges, including a weak economy, low consumer confidence, corporate travel cutbacks, reduced flight schedules and the threat of terrorism. Following 9/11, business volumes crashed. Many operators reacted by chopping prices, reducing service and quality levels and cutting back on advertising and sales activities. If a company has a long-term view, that’s the wrong way to go.

First, you won’t win by dropping prices in the face of a systemic decline in demand. The lodging industry has learned that lesson the hard way. It can take a long time for pricing to return to the level necessary to generate an acceptable margin. Second, reducing service and quality levels in a buyers' market is a bad combination. The fastest way to turn off customers and erode brand loyalty is to deliver an experience that does not meet a customer’s expectation. When things get tough, consumers seek out brands and companies they can count on to deliver consistent, distinctive and memorable experiences.

A limousine, the chauffeured transportation industry’s product, just like in most services businesses, is essentially a commodity. It delivers functional benefits. Are they important? Of course they are. The car has to function and deliver the customer to the destination on time. But it’s not enough. That’s simply an expectation, the minimal cost of entry by most customers. The only real differentiating factor in most service businesses are the people and the culture. People deliver the emotional benefits of the brand: those elements that especially lead to memorable, pleasantly unexpected experiences. These exceptional experiences form long-lasting bonds with customers. A downturn is a good time to reinforce service excellence at your company, a sure-fire way to distinguish one commodity from another.

Lastly, cutting back on advertising and selling activities in a tough market is a dicey proposition for a brand. We know that brand equity, the true measure of the power of a brand, is based upon two factors: perceived quality and salience. We’ve already discussed the importance of product quality and service levels to an organization. Salience is “top of mind” awareness. Basically, do consumers know about your company or your brand. It doesn’t matter how strong your quality level is if the consumer doesn’t know you. Therefore, aggressive marketing and selling activities are critical in a tough economy. Quality perceptions and awareness levels must both be high to enjoy strong brand equity.

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About LRA Worldwide

LRA Worldwide is a leading global provider of integrated customer loyalty solutions. LRA's services, systems and technology focus on a single business outcome: helping clients build and retain customer satisfaction and loyalty. LRA Worldwide’s proprietary customer loyalty solutions ensure that companies provide their customers with consistent, memorable and distinctive brand experiences. Products and services include design/development of company standards, customer service/leadership training, quality assurance programs, customer satisfaction-loyalty feedback systems and performance measurement and improvement. The company focuses on industries and sectors where “hospitality” and service excellence are central elements of the brand. Operating in over 90 countries, LRA has a broad global reach with regional offices located in the U.S., Europe, Middle East & Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.lraworldwide.com.

For further information, please contact:

Contact: Ms. Debra Andrews
Tel: +1.215.957.1999, ext. 26
Fax: +1.215.957.6570
E-mail: dandrews@lraworldwide.com

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