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"Guests Don't Lie" is Theme of New Intercontinental Hotels Group Quality Initiative
New hotel performance program puts guest opinion first
ATLANTA, Georgia/HORSHAM, Pennsylvania; September 22, 2003 - Who should carry the most weight in rating a hotel stay? Why, the guest of course. That belief is at the core of a new quality assessment program recently introduced in the Americas by the world's most global hotel company, InterContinental Hotels Group [LON: IHG, NYSE: IHG (ADRs)], and jointly conceived and developed with IHG by LRA Worldwide.
InterContinental Hotels Group's new Guest Endorsement System (GUEST) incorporates each individual guest's feedback as a reality-based mini-inspection. The assessment component of the program focuses on results of guest surveys. Three criteria comprise each hotel's quality score: performance on physical product-related questions (such as room cleanliness), performance on service-related questions (such as professional attitude and appearance of staff) and the average of responses on key questions designed to determine the guest's intent to return to that hotel. These include queries about value for the price paid, overall satisfaction and whether the guest would recommend the hotel to others.
"The heart of this program is acknowledgement that guests don't lie about their experiences at hotels," said John Merkin, Vice President, Franchise Operations, InterContinental Hotels Group. "Our guests are true judges of a hotel's performance, and allowing them to have a loud voice in rating a hotel is the best way to get a quality measurement. We appreciate the close support of the team from LRA Worldwide, who helped us design and implement this innovative brand management and quality improvement and compliance initiative."
Among the leading-edge features of the GUEST program is an interactive Web site through which hotels gauge and self-report their progress on a monthly basis. Based on this input, InterContinental Hotels Group provides each property with suggestions for best practices and better alignment with brand standards, training and other education opportunities. InterContinental Hotels Group will work specifically with those hotels that fail to achieve acceptable overall guest satisfaction scores and maintain quality standards to help them improve their operations or commence the process of removing them from the system should it become necessary. The net effect is a significantly shortened feedback and correction process that allows the hotels to identify and respond much more quickly to customer needs. "With GUEST we are able to work together to help hotels take care of customer issues as they arise, and before they become major problems," Merkin said. "It's allowing our general managers and hotel staffs, as well as those of us at the corporate level, to see each hotel through the eyes of the guests—a crucial perspective on quality."
Remarked Diana Oreck, LRA Worldwide's Project Manager, "Kirk Kinsell, Senior Vice President, Americas Franchising and Business Development and John Merkin of InterContinental Hotels Group really deserve the accolades for taking the initiative to explore new and improved ways to enhance the customer experience and improve product and service quality at their hotels. We believe that the GUEST program sends a strong signal to hotel operators that guest satisfaction and hotel quality is Job #1, and must be owned and managed 24/7 by the team on property. This program will provide relevant data that can really help the decision-making process. For example, responses from the InterContinental Hotels Group Guest Endorsement System will be evaluated to help make decisions such as what services and amenities to offer or discontinue, what processes might smooth and "humanize" the check-in/check-out process and what investments should be made in the property."
"Guests vote their satisfaction by choosing to return…or not," Merkin said. "This program will make it very clear how well we are doing and give us a head-start on fine-tuning our performance to live up to the promise of our brands. Our ultimate goal is that every guest has a positive experience at each and every InterContinental Hotels Group hotel."
About InterContinental Hotels Group
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC of the United Kingdom [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)], owns, manages, leases or franchises, through various subsidiaries, more than 3,300 hotels and 515,000 guest rooms in nearly 100 countries and territories around the world (www.ichotelsgroup.com). The Group owns a portfolio of well-recognized and respected hotel brands, including InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, and Staybridge Suites®, and also has a controlling interest in Britvic, the second largest soft drinks manufacturer in the UK.
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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