LQA - Leading Quality Assurance

In our efforts to constantly add value to our clients, Leading Quality Assurance has introduced the following enhancements to our service and product offering: multilingual capabilities, CD-ROMs with an electronic version of the inspection to accompany all reports and better graphical displays within the reports.

The entire LQA report (i.e. 1200 standards) has now been translated into six different languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Therefore, clients can now request that the final report be sent to them in any one of the above languages. This service will improve the communication of the standards to both management and staff alike, which will make the report more user friendly and helpful in assisting hotels to achieve their service goals.

Also in 2005 LQA will now send a CD-Rom with each and every hard copy of the report. The CD-Rom will include the entire inspection, the digital photos and the digital recordings of the reservation and room service calls. Again this service should assist the hotel with the distribution and communication of the report.

Finally, LQA has invested in improving the graphical displays included within the report. In addition to the regional and worldwide benchmarking data already provided, there will be several charts clearly displaying where your hotel is above and below The Leading Hotels of the World average on a departmental basis. This will allow the hotels to see at a glance the areas that they need to specifically address.

All of the above enhancements have been aimed at offering the best report available, which in turn will assist your hotel at achieving service excellence.

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In 2004 Leading Quality Assurance launched a service which offered all of its clients access to the most comprehensive benchmarking data in the luxury hotel sector. In 2005 we have now added the Leading Spas data to this on line facility, allowing Leading Spas to compare their results against other spas on a worldwide, regional, country or city specific basis.

In order to access this data:

Go to the Leading Quality Assurance homepage at www.leadingquality.com

Where it says account number, type in your unique account number. If you have forgotten your account number, please follow the prompt, as outlined under the login button. For security reasons you will only be granted access to the client section if you type in a valid account number.

Under password, type in: canada. The password will change periodically to ensure maximum security and you will be advised of the new password via the LQA e-newsletter.

Once the account number and the password have been entered press submit. From here you make your individual selection from the drop down menus and create a report on the data you are interested in.

In 2005 the business traveller has come to have very high expectations from the luxury hotel sector in terms of offering a business user-friendly room. There are several facilities which feature in a business orientated room including: the desk, the desk chair, lighting, telephones and Internet access. The expectation begins with the desk. No longer is this just a decorative piece of furniture, instead it is at the heart of the business experience. As such, desks are getting larger and better equipped. Surprisingly, we still come across hotels where there are no spare power points at the desk and instead the guests have to unplug an appliance in order to plug in their computer, mobile telephone or PDA. In contrast, at Peninsula Hotels the desks come with built in spare power points, high-speed Internet access and several international plug adapters. For those hotels that want to keep the design sleek, such as Acqualina, Sunny Isles Florida, the spare power point and Internet connection are discreetly built into the base of the desk lamp. The lighting is another area often overlooked and we are seeing a move to adjustable lighting at the desk. The chair is also very important from a comfort level and hotels such as Emirates Towers, Dubai have addressed this by introducing ergonomic chairs, which swivel, are on castors and offer both back and height adjustment capabilities.

The telephone plays a key part of the business experience with a minimum expectation being three telephones within the room (i.e. by the bed, on the desk and in the bathroom). There is definitely a trend to at least one of these telephones being wireless allowing the user ultimate mobility. In addition, the telephones must have voice mail, message waiting and speed dial facilities as well as two telephone lines. However, perhaps the single most important change over the past few years is Internet access, which has moved from the standard dial up to a high speed broadband connection to the newest trend, WiFi capabilities. Whilst some hotels charge for this service and others do not, either way easy accessibility to this service is of paramount importance. To back this system up, qualified staff should be on hand to assist as required. Hotels such as The Dorchester, London have cleverly addressed this by introducing an e-butler service, whose function is to assist arriving guests with their IT needs. Above I have listed the basic requirements of the business traveller. Ensure that they are in place and it will have a favourable impact on your next Leading Quality Assurance audit.