Anastasiya Belyakova: The Leading Hotels of the World can predict customers’ wishes

Anastasiya Belyakova, head of Leading Hotels Moscow, office is speaking about the company’s standards and about the association that unites more than 430 hotels and resorts in 80 countries.

The Leading Hotels of the World has been one of the standard bearers of the hospitality industry for 85 years. The company has been holding the rightful place among luxury hotel brands, and for many customers the Leading Hotels brand means an obvious and an unconditional choice. In 2014 The Leading Hotels of the World and the Russian Association of Business Travel have signed a strategic partnership agreement.

One of the most important company divisions is Leading Quality Assurance. It works out and revises the list of more than 800 parameters of hotel quality. As it makes assessment of the most reputed representatives of the luxury segment, including Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, the Leading Quality Assurance (LQA) division has the full information about the best practices in this industry. The inspection of conformance to the requirements for Leading Hotels participants and prospective members is carried out by inspectors who arrive incognito and check all the hotel services.

This complex system of criteria has been worked out to analyze all the steps that a guest passes, from booking a room till checking out. Special attention is paid to parameters like the level of comfort, technical facilities, the general atmosphere, the service rate, the list of services, food and drinks quality. Special additional standards are applied to SPA hotels that are accredited by Leading Spa.

It is no secret, that many services change their category from «desired, but not necessary» to «anticipated» very quickly. Some ten years ago it was common to provide Internet access in the hotel’s public zones only or through a cable for extra charge. Nowadays free wi-fi is for many clients one of the main criteria of their choice of accommodation, and moreover, an expected service, the absence or the availability of which can affect the choice of a hotel.

This is why Leading Hotels revises and improves its standards every year, and the only aim of this procedure is not only to meet, but to foresee the wishes of customers who have got used to everything best.

The emotional aspect has been in the focus of Leading Hotels standards lately. For example, the intonation of the greeting phrase may vary. Leading Hotels standards are to assess the level of attention and the individual approach to every customer — for example, how polite the staff member was when addressing the guest and whether he managed to find common grounds with him or not.

Personal experience of the guest staying at the hotel has been regarded as the key factor of quality assessment more and more often. This is why customers prefer Leading Hotels, the symbol of high quality customized service. (lhw.com)