Best Western International, the world's largest hotel chain with nearly 4,100 properties in 83 countries, has embraced quality and customer loyalty as a central focus in the revitalization of their global brand. BWI's quality and customer loyalty initiatives are the combined result of guest comments, extensive research, member input and board of directors action. The Best Western orgni.zation provides maket.ing, reservations and opetational support to its members. BWI believes there are unique benefits to this organizational structure, including its position as the low-cost provider of hotel brand services. LRAWorldwide had the opportunity to interview several of the company's senior executives, including Jim Evans, President and CEO, Si Sloman, Vice President-Op.er.a.tions and Cindy Binkele, 2001 Chairwoman of the BWI Board and owner of the Best Western Somerset Manor located in San Luis Obispo, California. LRA:The term "Brand" is one of the most overused words in business today. Advertising legend David Ogilvy said a brand is "the intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging and price, its history, its reputation and the way it is advertised." What does the term Brand mean to you? Jim Evans: To the customer, a brand is my insurance policy. It's that simple. It's my guarantee that the car I buy, the food I eat, the clothes I wear, are all quality products and suit my needs. There's no lawyers' fine print or complex written promises. It's a simple understood promise between the producer of the product and me. If they break that unwritten promise, I'll be shopping down the street in a heartbeat. An insurance policy that promises no surprises. At its heart, that's what a strong brand is. Years ago I once worked for a man I truly cherished. He used to say to us, "consistency is more important than perfection. Work on being consistent". And consistency does not mean losing BWI's individuality of style and atmosphere. Instead, it means we build consistent quality, value and service on our individual foundations. LRA: What actions must Best Western take to manage your brand to a higher level of competitiveness and greatness? Jim Evans:
Our immediate goal is to focus the entire Best Western team, that's all of
us, on Delivering our Best! To strengthen our global brand, we must focus
on the right actions that support the company's mission, which is to serve
the collective interests of our members and customers worldwide by achieving
guest satifaction and brand loyalty with our wide range of accomodations and
hospitality services. This will ensure that the Best Western brand is more
valuable than any alternative in the hospitality indutry.
In order to accomplish this, we are creating and implementing key strategies that advance member value and brand loyalty. These include a combination of advertising, communications, sales, marketing, training, design standards, quality assurance initiatives, customer feedback mechanisms...all working to exceed customers' expectations and build business for all Best Western members. While each initiative is important and impressive individually, as a group, they are arguably the largest product quality undertaking of its kind in the hotel industry. LRA: A core component of your brand and quality initiatives is your Best Requests program. Could you describe your Best Requests program for us? Jim Evans, Si Sloman, Cindy Binkele: In early 2001, we launched 16 new North American and 14 international minimum global standards for our 4,100 properties. The consumer-driven "Best Requests" are part of an eight-point quality enhancement program instituted by Best Western We are pleased to introduce our new Best Requests global amenities and services because this is what our guests asked for from us We are making them policy worldwide. For the past two years, we have conducted more than $2 million in consumer and travel industry research on three continents to assess guest perceptions and identify common amenities and services that every guest wants, whether they are in Hong Kong, China, Paris, or Chicago. Our research revealed that business and leisure traveler expectations were remarkably similar across the globe; guests want consistency on specific room amenities and services. Our member/owners, who deal with an estimated 250,000 guests each day, met to develop the specifics of Best Requests. We studied more than 50 items, narrowing the list to 16 after extensive consumer testing, competitive assessments and member dialogues Our research indicated that Best Western, as the world's largest hotel brand, had a unique opportunity to improve guest perception and usage. A set of Best Requests amenities and services were fully implemented in North America by year-end 2001, and internationally by the end of the first quarter 2002 Best Requests will increase consistency, while allowing our properties to retain the uniqueness and individuality which makes Best Western the world's leading hotel brand The Best Requests include:
LRA: Best Requests focuses principally on hotel amenities and brand standards. Quality improvement is also playing a key role in enhancing the overall brand and guest experience. What are the various components of Best Western's quality initiative? Si Sloman: We've addressed issues of bricks-and-mortar quality with the Best Request program. Now we want to fo.cus on customer service. Our board of directors is supporting Best Western's commitment to quality with a more rigorous stance on property compliance. If a hotel does not meet Best Western's standards of quality and consistency, it will no longer fly the Best Western flag. As evidence of this commitment, BWI's board of directors in 2000 terminated the membership of a record 94 North American properties for quality assurance issues, compared with 22 the prior year. With our renewed emphasis on quality, we want to remain on the competitive forefront of our peer group in the two and three diamond categories. Our quality initiatives include:
What is Best Western doing in the area of standards both for guest service and for design?
Si Sloman:Best Western is currently developing parallel service standard enhancements to compliment the new product standards. Now that our properties are reaching new quality levels physically, we want to ensure that our service is at the same high level. Best Western members and affiliates are working with staff operating and training experts to identify service elements that will provide greater product continuity. We will step up significantly our training and education programs to give property level associates the tools and skills to meet our guests needs and expectations. Today, 42 Regional Service Managers not only conduct quality assessments twice a year, but also provide training at each hotel focused on each property's needs. Best Western has launched a beta test at 121 (21 in phase 1 and 100 in phase 2) North American member properties to simplify and enhance our design evaluation process to keep properties new and fresh and appealing in a rapidly changing hotel industry.
LRA: Best Western has empowered our team of 52 special customer relations agents to resolve guest issues on the spot. Our goal is consistent, high-level guest satisfaction. BWI also has introduced a new customer feedback section on its website, www.bestwestern.com, where guests can click onto a "Guest Satisfaction Survey" option and respond to a variety of questions regarding their stay at a Best Western hotel. Travelers can provide input on nearly all aspects of their stay, from the functionality of the telephone to the promptness of hotel staff. An open comment section completes the survey. BWI is also beta testing during 2001 a new guest satisfaction rating system. We will combine our website information with information gathered on-site to better track consumer issues and uncover new guest trends. LRA: With quality being a central focus of Best Western's brand initiatives, what specifically do you hope to accomplish during your one-year tenure as chairwoman? Cindy Binkele: Over the past few years, Best Western has been quietly reinventing itself. As one of the oldest and most recognized brands in the hotel industry, we felt that our 55th anniversary was the ideal occasion to reintroduce our revitalized brand, and introduce our impressive list of major new initiatives. In our business, you can sell a bad product once, but you can't fool customers twice. Accordingly, building a service culture at Best Western International is one of my primary goals. We are in a service industry and this is a service economy. When we approved the quality standards, we took a great step forward in becoming more of a service company. Now we need to have service standards. The new service standards, which include additional training and education, and the new minimum global standards, are part of an eight-point quality initiative the brand has embarked on. LRA: There has been talk in the industry that Best Western is addressing a potential tiering system, which could group properties based on design, quality and customer service. Jim Evans: Part of the consideration for a tiering system is an overall improvement of the brand's more than 4,100 properties worldwide. Essentially, these properties would be the best of Best Western. Properties would not be grouped into limited-service and full-service tiers. There is still a chance that a tiering system for the brand could be introduced in North America. We are going to test it in Europe this fall, and 140 hotels there have applied for another tier.
The world's most powerful brands are built around a commitment to Brand Assurance. In this interview, LRAWorldwide had the opportunity to speak with Tina Edmundson, Vice President-Rooms and Related for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Tina shares her philosophy on the importance of training, a critical step in the Brand Assurance Process. Starwood's training initiatives are focused only on the areas that have the greatest impact to their customer, with cleanliness of the guestroom at the forefront. Tina says, "It's as easy as ABC." Tina Edmundson shares with us the ABC's of Housekeeping, Starwood's customized training strategy and program for delivering perfect guestroom cleanliness. LRA: Tina, tell us about the ABC's of Housekeeping Program. What led to its development? Tina: The ABC's of Housekeeping is just part of Starwood's training strategy. Our programs focus on what is really important to the customer. We find out what the customer wants and then translate that into our hotel operation plans. When we ask customers what really matters, cleanliness continually appears as a top customer satisfaction driver. In fact, customers tell us that their intent to return is driven by the cleanliness of the hotel, and that their likelihood to never stay at the property again is very high if we haven't delivered on the cleanliness promise. LRA:We all agree cleanliness is important. But how do you determine what's "clean" to the customer? Do the expectations vary? Tina: Not really. Cleanliness is "personal" and a guest does not want to see signs of the previous guest in their room. If you think about it, you check into a hotel and that becomes your home, your haven while you are on the road You want that area to be yours and you do not want any remnants of a previous guest.
LRA: A couple of things come to mind: The visibility of debris in the room; mold, mildew and hair. Seeing these things immediately triggers a customer reaction that says, "Hey, that's dirty." Our research told us that these are the areas that customers want us to focus on. LRA: It looks like we agree on the problem. Now how do you fight back? Tina: As you know, we own a lot of our hotels, so we took a look at what cleaning processes were already successful. Quite simply, we found out there were a lot of processes in use, some were even documented, listing the exact steps involved in cleaning a room. We looked further and found no two hotels had the same process, and even within the same hotel, no two room attendants followed the same process. To further complicate things, even the same room attendant did not clean the first room in the same manner as they [sic] cleaned their last in a given day. The simple fact of the matter is there was no consistency. Our philosophy was to get the rooms cleaned on a consistent basis using an easy to understand process. We wanted something that would take the room attendant around the room focusing on areas that were critical to the customer. Our cleaning programs would be successful based on consistency, and that really is the whole premise of the ABC's of Housekeeping. If you believe that consistent process will yield a consistent product, then you buy into the concept of the ABC's. LRA: How do you get the message across to the room attendants? They really are the people who make it happen. Tina: When I teach the training class, I always talk about consistency. I give McDonald's as an example. When you eat french fries at the McDonald's in New York City or at the McDonald's in Dallas, Texas they always taste the same. You ask yourself why do they taste the same and why can nobody else in the industry provide the same consistency? McDonald's will answer in their advertising; they promote delicious golden fries and customers expect just that. It's really that McDonald's has been able to deliver on that promise over and over at every location. The hotel industry needs to deliver on that type of promise with the same consistency. If you stay at a Sheraton, Westin or Four Points by Sheraton, the rooms must be consistently clean. They must be consistently clean in Dallas as well as in New York. The secret is to have a consistent process. We will never be successful in delivering the promise unless there is a consistent process. That really is the premise of the ABC's of Housekeeping.
LRA: There is a lot to do in each room and finding the most efficient way helps everyone. LRA: How long did it take for the housekeepers to embrace the program? Tina: When we first rolled out the program there was a lot of resistance. However, once word got out of the success of their counterparts at other hotels, we started seeing the cleanliness metrics as measured by LRAWorldwide and our GSI Guest Satisfaction response improve. In fact, there was significant improvement It was like a wake-up call. Once we published this information, that cleanliness was improving and related scores were up, we had much more support and participation. LRA: Thanks for the "plug" Tina. I guess we should mention that GSI is Guest Satisfaction Index from JD Power. It's really not that simple is it? Tina: Not at all. It's a huge commitment from the property and especially the housekeepers. You can't just watch the video and see how it works. You really have to buy into what you are trying to do. Most important, you have to inspect what you expect. Our program includes a measurement component. A property has to adopt the entire process (A-Z) or we don't give them credit for participating.
LRA: You always have those room attendants that have been doing a good job for 30 years and quite frankly have developed a very efficient system. I teach the Directors of Housekeeping to work with this group first and spend some extra time with them. Believe it or not, we have turned the corner with this group. In fact, once they embrace the program the rest of the department joins right along. We have seen quite a bit of success even at our older Sheraton and Westin properties that have most of the veteran room attendants. LRA: Do you find this to help in a tight labor market? We all know housekeeping departments generally have very high turnover. Tina: Absolutely! In a tight labor market, the better tools and training that you can provide will help retain those employees. LRA: You mentioned there is some correlation between the measurement methodologies of LRA and GSI. Are the improvements one-to-one or is there other significance? Tina: It was incredibly significant. We had properties improve from a 7.4 to an 8.6 in GSI cleanliness. It kind of took you aback, and this was over a three-month period. It's not just one month. There were obviously other pieces that attributed to the overall cleanliness improvements. In one case, there was a new director of housekeeping. Using the tools of ABC's of Housekeeping, he saw huge increases. The average is a 5% increase, but when you looked at the charts and see the hotels that peaked you can really see the potential. LRA: What makes the ABC's of Housekeeping unique from other training programs? Tina: It's unique because it is not so much a program, but a product based on process. Training programs typically have a short shelf life, and then they go away because of a variety of reasons. They are not the priority anymore because that area is fixed or it was the flavor of month. And, once the flavor of the month has gone away or we've decided to do it better, the program fizzles. With ABC's of Housekeeping, I think it is so basic to what we do, it's so basic to our customer's expectation, I cannot ever imagine it going away. Cleanliness Results Of the hotels using the ABC's program with the audits/forms, the average score for guestroom cleanliness was 90%. Those hotels not using the program or incorrectly using the program received an average of 87%. What's more, using the overall benchmark for cleanliness (87%) as the standard, 70.4% of the hotels using ABC's scored above this benchmark. Only a mere 57.6% of the hotels not using the program could say the same. For GSI Guest Satisfaction scores, we also saw an increase: 17 of the 24 hotels went up 71%. Looking at all 24 hotels, even the 7 that didn't increase, the average increase in cleanliness of the room was 4.1%; cleanliness of the bath went up 4.9%; and maintenance of the guest room went up 40% for each attribute; the property average mean score steadily increased quarter-to-quarter. For GSI, by the close of the year, Cleanliness of Guest Room increased .32, Cleanliness of Bathroom jumped .38, and Maintenance of Guest Room rose by .30.
Balanced Care Corporation (Amex:BAL) is bucking the trend by embracing a well-designed brand strategy and quality performance initiative designed to distinguish their organization, despite the very difficult economic environment the assisted living and senior housing industry is facing in North America. In 1998, Balanced Care moved ahead with an effort to brand all of its communities with the Outlook Pointe brand name. Foremost in their branding strategy was a desire to carve-out a clear brand identity to deliver on their brand promise, to create a secure, home-like setting in their communities and to differentiate themselves from competing assisted living and long-term care providers. The Company began by conducting brand research. They retained a national research firm to explore assisted living at a national level and within fourteen of their markets. Interviews were conducted at these Balanced Care communities with residents, families, influencers, people who were making a deposit and those who made deposits with their competition. Balanced Care was able to identify the top brand deliverables that one would seek when selecting an assisted living community. The customers and referral sources actually helped craft the Outlook Pointe Brand Promise. The top deliverables were identified as food, activities, independence and dignity. Other factors include:
Other benefits of the branding effort include a consistent "look and feel" to the communities as well as increased operational efficiencies. In addition, the architectural and interior design concepts of the Outlook Pointe signature series facilities incorporate Balanced Care Corporation's operating philosophy of protecting resident privacy, enabling freedom of choice, encouraging independence and fostering individuality in a home-like setting. Balanced Care Corporation, based in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, operates 57 assisted/independent living communities and skilled nursing facilities throughout 8 states. In selected markets, the company provides Alzheimer's and extended care through a continuum of services that supports residents' needs through the aging process. Today, the assisted living industry finds itself in the throes of a very difficult economic environment. Beginning in 1999 and continuing through this year, the industry has been negatively impacted by a combination of factors including overbuilding, slower-than-projected lease-ups, capital constraints and the sector's unfortunate association with skilled nursing facilities, which have faced even tougher conditions. To help offset the impact of the economic downturn facing the assisted living industry, the company has embraced branding and a quality and customer service initiative called the Outlook Pointe Performance Enhancement Program. Led by Gary Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, and Sharon Williams, Senior Vice President-Sales & Marketing, the company's quality assurance and performance enhancement program is designed to achieve, maintain and enhance high performance in the area of resident and family satisfaction, employee development, fiscal responsibility, corporate integrity, along with continuous internal quality improvement. Corporate office staff oversees the implementation of the quality and performance enhancement program at each of the company's facilities. Resident and family participation is sought through satisfaction surveys, focus groups, resident and family councils and discussions with family members. Through their Friend of the Family Program, a Balanced Care employee assists families by being a friend and advocate of the family. Calls are answered from across the country from families seeking guidance and direction with helping Mom or Dad in their particular living situation. The Friend of the Family helps them find care selections that may be assisted living or skilled nursing. This line is also used by Balanced Care Associates to address their concerns as well. In addition, Balanced Care provides intensive training programs to ensure that its employees achieve quality standards. All new hires at the leadership level of a community attend Balanced Care University (BCU) and utilize BCU Creekview, a community located close to the corporate offices. Individuals not only receive classroom instruction, but are also able to work and train with the Creekview staff. It's not uncommon to see leaders from the corporate offices, such as Robin Griffith, Vice-President Support Services, working directly with future leaders. Internal standards for all areas of service have been established that the company believes meet or exceed those of regulatory agencies. Monitoring and improving internal performance in regard to these standards is facilitated by cross-functional performance improvement teams. Additionally, inspections of each facility are conducted regularly to assess all aspects of operations, care and services.
According to Balanced Care's Gary Anderson, "Over the years, the company has evolved from an aggressive development phase to a current emphasis on quality operations. Our focus is making Outlook Pointe a name which consumers know and trust. The Outlook Pointe brand carries with it a brand promise and a product that fulfills the needs of our customer." "Our entire approach to marketing and sales is based upon our Outlook Pointe brand promise," says Sharon Lynn Williams of
Williams' remarks reinforce the commitment Balanced Care Corporation has in the power of branding and continuous quality improvement to set apart their organization.
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LRAWorldwide is the leading provider of specialized brand performance and quality assurance consulting services to the global hospitality, travel and senior living industries. With offices in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific regions, the company services clients throughout the world. Targeted industries include lodging, gaming, timeshare, senior housing, assisted living, corporate housing, transportation, travel services, food and facilities management, real estate, business and recreational facilities, CVBs, corporate travel and tourism.
LRAWorldwide News is a periodic newsletter designed to update clients and contacts on activities and news at the company, as well as the industries the company services. This publication is provided for information only. Permission to reprint these articles is granted, provided that LRAWorldwide is referenced and notified prior to use. If you have any questions regarding LRAWorldwide News or need additional information regarding the company, please contact Suzanne Troxel at +1.215.957.1999 Ext. 14 at the U.S. Headquarters or via email at stroxel@lraworldwide.com
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