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ARAMARK Harrison Lodging Selects LRA Worldwide to Provide a Global Brand Performance and Customer Loyalty Solution
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania/HORSHAM, Pennsylvania; April 1, 2003 - ARAMARK Harrison Lodging, the leading global operator of conference and collegiate hospitality management, has retained LRA Worldwide to design, implement and administer an innovative Global Performance System for the company. In June 2002, ARAMARK Conference Center Management's experience and excellence in operations and managed services merged with Harrison Conference Centers' unsurpassed marketing strength and innovation. The partnership united two of the most influential forces in the meetings industry to create outstanding environments for learning, with a special emphasis on maintaining the highest standards in guest satisfaction.
Said Rory Loberg, ARAMARK Harrison Lodging Executive Vice President, "Our company has enjoyed dramatic growth, with over 50 nationwide conference centers and another 40 in Europe and the Far East. We are committed to the complete satisfaction of guests and clients. The singular focus of all of our energies remains the customer, and we seek to build stronger and more enduring partnerships with every customer. As a result of our continuing growth, we are now taking the opportunity to better align, organize and articulate all of the elements that serve to distinguish our organization and help us consistently meet and exceed our customer's expectations. The AHL global performance system we are developing with LRA Worldwide focuses on AHL's legendary customer service culture, our brand and quality standards, our customer satisfaction measurement systems and our quality assurance processes."
Stated Sean McLaughlin, AHL's Director of Brand Performance, "We are pleased to be partnering with LRA Worldwide on this important initiative. Each of these activities forms the key elements of the AHL global performance system. Working with LRA, we are first creating a global knowledge base of AHL brand and quality standards and business practices, which is entirely Web-enabled. We want all of our associates to have easy access, 24/7, to our standards, systems and business practices that define our brand. The Web-based knowledge base will accomplish this requirement and make it easy to modify and enhance our standards and business practices over time. We are also working with LRA to introduce a Web-enabled customer satisfaction survey to obtain real-time feedback from our meeting attendees, guests and meeting planners. The e-mail surveys will increase response rates, reduce costs and allow us to quickly obtain important customer feedback. In conjunction with the enhanced customer satisfaction feedback program, LRA is designing a quality assurance and shopping program that will help identify the detailed operational issues that might be preventing Top Box performance." "We are honored to have been selected as ARAMARK Harrison Lodging's partner for this important initiative, said John Roberto, Executive Vice President of LRA Worldwide. "LRA has spent over two decades helping many of the world's leading hospitality and travel companies build and retain world-class levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. ARAMARK Harrison Lodging's keen focus on customer service, operational excellence and quality are synergistic to our own ideals. The AHL global performance system we are designing for AHL will ensure that each and every AHL conference and collegiate collection center consistently meets and exceeds the customer's expectation, which is our definition of loyalty."
About ARAMARK Harrison Lodging
Offering a collection of the world's most effective environments for learning, communication and personal growth, ARAMARK Harrison Lodging operates more than 100 conference centers, corporate training centers, and specialty hotels in educational environments - each strategically located close to leading business destinations. The company supports the stringent standards of IACC and harnesses the power and expertise of its founding entities to expand its contributions to the industry. Headquartered in Philadelphia, ARAMARK Harrison Lodging is a unit of ARAMARK, a $9 billion world leader in managed services. ARAMARK has more than 170,000 employees serving 15 million people at 500,000 locations in 15 countries every day. Parent company ARAMARK was named among Fortune Magazine's "Most Admired Companies in America" this past spring, and its CEO was cited as among the best business leaders in the world in the September 2002 and January 2003 issues of BusinessWeek. To learn more about ARAMARK Harrison Lodging or to book a meeting, log onto www.aramarkharrisonlodging.com, or call the company's "one stop" sales office at 1-800-422-MEET.
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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