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Grupo Posadas Partners with LRA Worldwide to Help Enhance the Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn Brands
New Brand Performance Program to Measure and Improve Guest Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty
MEXICO CITY, D.F./HORSHAM, Pennsylvania; September 9, 2002 - Grupo Posadas, S.A. de C.V., the leading hotel company in Latin America, announced today that it has retained LRA Worldwide to design and implement a customized brand performance and quality assurance program to enhance the company's flagship Fiesta Americana and the Fiesta Inn brands. With a focus on creating memorable customer experiences and improving operational excellence, the program, called Sistema Prometeo, serves as a basis for enhancing guest satisfaction, brand loyalty and hotel profitability.
"Grupo Posadas' brands operate under the most strict standards of service and quality, and this initiative will help underscore our commitment to be the very best hotel operator in our marketplace" said Javier Barrera, Grupo Posadas' executive vice president. "Our concentration has been to consolidate our position as the leader in the Latin American market, providing business and leisure travelers with a variety of lodging options within our Fiesta Americana, Fiesta Inn, Caesar Park and Explorean family of brands. In conjunction with LRA Worldwide, we are now implementing the sophisticated hotel performance tracking systems necessary to measure our performance and provide the roadmap to continue to enhance our brand integrity and customer loyalty."
Barrera said that the Fiesta Americana-LRA brand assurance program provides a continuous improvement process that will ensure that the Fiesta Americana and the Fiesta Inn mission, brand promise and consumer message are directly aligned with the brand's standards, training programs and performance measures. "This program goes well-beyond a traditional quality assurance process used by other hotel brands," he said. "By assuring that we consistently deliver a perfect brand experience to our many guests, we will generate high levels of guest satisfaction and intent to return to the Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn brands, which is how we define brand loyalty."
"In our view, consistency and a customer-centric focus is the bedrock of all world-class brands. Accordingly, our objective is to help Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn ensure consistency and excellence in product and service delivery through a comprehensive brand assurance program," said Robert Rush, president and ceo of LRA Worldwide. "We are creating proprietary processes centered around an innovative quality assurance program. Our program is designed to bring simplicity to a complicated process, and to help focus Posadas staff members attention on the key elements of the Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn experience that form the primary drivers of guest satisfaction, brand loyalty and profitability."
"In addition, Grupo Posadas and LRA Worldwide have designed and are implementing a multi-dimensional performance scorecard, that will aggregate all of the key Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn hotel performance metrics, including the results of quality assurance assessments, guest satisfaction surveys, employee surveys, consumer affairs, competitor performance and economic performance," said Fernando Fernandez, LRA Worldwide's Senior Consultant for Latin America, Spain and Portugal. "The scorecard will provide the brands with a complete picture of each individual property and the system as a whole," said Fernandez. "Accurate performance data will enable us to provide the appropriate guidance to our own general managers and hotel staff and enhance the brand experience at all levels for our guests," Barrera said. "The scorecard also will allow us to track and reward superior performance and target training to areas where individual properties need the most help. LRA has responded to our needs to provide this program in Spanish, our native language, which will further facilitate our learning."
About Grupo Posadas
Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inns are the flagship brands of Grupo Posadas, S.A. de C.V., based in Mexico City. Posadas operates more than 50 hotels with over 11,000 rooms in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and the United States. Posadas' Fiesta Americana, Fiesta Inn, Caesar Park and Explorean brands hold a leading position in their respective markets. Fiesta Inn, business class hotels designed for frequent business travelers, is the fastest growing chain in the last five years in Mexico. The company's shares are traded on the Mexican Stock Exchange (POSADAS). For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.posadas.com.
About LRA Worldwide, Inc.
LRA Worldwide, Inc. is a leading consulting, organizational development and research company that specializes in Customer Experience Management (CEM). LRA helps companies and brands design and deliver the optimal customer experience across all key touch points using an integrated suite of services that measure and improve service quality, customer satisfaction, employee performance, loyalty, customer advocacy and profitability. LRA specializes in "operationalizing the brand" - turning brand promise and customer strategy into operational reality. LRA's CEM practice areas include CEM Strategy Design, Standards Development & Content Management, Organizational Development & Training, Research and Quality Assurance & Mystery Shopping; these are either deployed together in a strategic manner to continually monitor and improve the customer experience or deployed individually to address a specific tactical client need.
LRA's clients include some of the world's leading companies and brands, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos, the PGA TOUR, Albertsons Supermarkets, the NBA and First Niagara Financial Group. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.LRAworldwide.com
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