SGS On Task Benchmarking the Guest Experience

We read and hear a lot about the "guest experience" from hospitality experts. However, we do not often learn about the tools, standards and methods underneath, that empower hotels and other businesses to meet guest expectations. The latest trend in the industry is for hotels to be more flexible and agile in creating these experiences and for meeting expectations. One tool that caught my eye recently seems ready to aid hoteliers metamorphose their operations to meet the trend demand.

Late last year SGS released a comprehensive program for the industry. Hospitality Experience (HX) is a complete platform designed to help businesses maximize their brand reputation and the all-important guest experience. I caught up recently with the company's Head of Travel & Hospitality, Peter Hvidberg, in order to discuss his firm's offering and take on this important industry offshoot. Here is that discussion condensed.

Peter Hvidberg, SGS

Phil Butler: Where do hotel operations most often fail with their varied systems for risk management?

Peter Hvidberg: Until now it has been the norm to only focus on standard risk categories like food safety, water safety and building safety, but as we know the hospitality industry is a very dynamic sector, with many new and emerging threats that can affect hotel operations. On top of that we have seen how the use of internet and virtual payments have taken over how travel is managed and booked, creating a new data and cyber security risk. The latest statistics indicate that 75% of global travel is booked online. Globally, we also face issues relative to security, hoteliers need to be protected or have all the procedures in place to prevent any attack or event that can affect guests. We also have seen the immediate impact of the social networks, and how a simple comment or a picture taken in poor context can affect the reputation of a Brand on a global scale. Studies show that 46% of all travelers read online reviews before booking their stay.

For this reason, SGS have been working directly with industry influencers to hear what the needs are and as a result have designed a unique solution called HX (Hospitality Experience Program).

This certification program consists of four modules, each focused on a specific industry need:

• Risk Module. This also contains the following submodules:
  ⦁ Food Safety
  ⦁ Water Safety
  ⦁ Building Safety
  ⦁ Security
  ⦁ Cyber Security
  ⦁ Business Continuity
• Sustainability Module
• Corporate Social Responsibility Module
• Quality of Service Experience Module

To give you some context as to how important addressing these risks can be, SGS has been collecting data from past Hotel audits and discovered that unknown conformities are more common than hotel managers think. Of over 10,000 audits performed:

• 75% of issues detected were related to building safety
• 15% of issues detected were related to wáter safety
• 10% of issues detected were related to food safety

With this program, our auditors can help properties to detect and prevent probable risks before they become a trend or real danger.

Phil Butler: With reviews playing a bigger and bigger role in driving bookings to hotels, how can HX help hoteliers with guest expectations?

Peter Hvidberg: The impact of new technologies and social media networks is huge for this industry. These technologies can make our lives easier when we would like to make a reservation or if we would like to look for information of a destination, but our guests can use them to share a bad or a good experience in our hotel, if is good great for us, but if it's bad we can't control the impact of that review.

For this reason, the implementation of program like HX help the organizations to prevent risk and have more control of that kind of situation. With HX the GM will have a better view about what is going on in their hotel and with the expertise of our teams we can help to prevent any damage to the reputation of the hotel.

Also, differentiation is becoming more and more difficult for hotels especially since entry of new players to the market is becoming more apparent. Three of the HX modules highlight certain values that customers are looking for when they book for hotels: QX highlights good service experience, sustainability highlights responsible use of energy / environment and management of wastes, and CSR highlights transparency and social responsibility. Depending on geographic markets, these could be attractive differentiators that if hotels practice and are certified under, could help bring more customers in.

Phil Butler: Why the three levels of certification?

Peter Hvidberg: First, we need to say that the HX is based on common industry painpoints that our experts have collected from performing over 10,000 property audits.

HX as a management system is based in the principle of "continuous improvement". We would like to be seen as a partner of the hotelier, partners that are going to accompany the hotelier on this journey.

In an ideal world, all organizations expect to achieve the big recognition, but the reality is that in very few times we find that everything is perfect. Thinking in that evolution based, in continuous improvement, the level of certification will increase with the maturity of the management system of the organization.

Phil Butler: In your literature, on HX you discuss market intelligence as a facet. Can you tell us a bit about how the service enables hoteliers?

Peter Hvidberg: One of the revolutionary aspects of HX is that it is a Global Recognition that combines common International Hotel painpoints, with Highly Experienced Auditors, and Big Data.

As we all know, Data is power. Our HX solution is based on a very innovative IT platform that enables us to create patterns and detect trends faster than ever, using this information we can help our clients offer more accurate data that could help them to take decisions and of course help us to design more customized solutions to our clients.

Phil Butler: What is "next" from SGS for the hospitality industry?

Peter Hvidberg: With the success of HX, we see an even bigger need to expand the service to other aspects of the hospitality industry, apart from Hotels. For example, cruise ships, tour operators, and so on. We are beginning to partner with industry universities as well and offering internship programs to many of the graduate students. We hope to continue to grow these relationships and expand our roots into the Travel & Hospitality world. From a content perspective, we are investing heavily in several thought leadership initiatives and plan to continually release relevant industry cases and papers. Recently we were featured in Hotel Yearbook with a piece on Sustainability and we found the response to be quite positive. In our eyes this shows us that we have only scratched the surface of what HX can do and how SGS can partner with hotels and push them to be the benchmark.

So, the industry is changing rapidly because of internal and external forces that decision makers must address. In order to keep abreast, hotel operations (independent or corporate) must have a fleet footed operational toolset to coincide with traditional hospitality norms. One key to solving these new flexibility and scale issues for hotels will be the engagement of global companies like SGS, which is the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. I think a great many hoteliers will find it fortuitous that a company with more than 2,000 offices is already on task.

Property Technology Travel Technology Reputation Management Guest Experience