Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO) Hospitality Assured programme promotes service and business excellence in the Bahamas
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Seven small properties in the Bahamas have enhanced their reputation for high standards of service quality. And they have the Hospitality Assured certificate to prove it.
These properties – Fernandez Bay Village and Sammy Ts Beach Resort on Cat Island, Small Hope Bay Lodge and Andros Island Bonefish Club on Andros, The Corner Hotel and The Orchard Garden Hotel in Nassau, and Ocean Pearl Resort on Grand Bahama Island – recently underwent a rigorous review by external assessors and satisfied the criteria provided to obtain the Hospitality Assured certification.
They now have the Hospitality Assured framework in place, which helps them to continuously raise their service quality standards within their individual business, focus on their customers’ needs in all aspects of their business, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and improve overall business performance.
“Hospitality Assured has provided us with focus, making the entire team at Fernandez Bay look at how all that we do is interconnected and impacts guest expectations and guest experiences. Our special little property has been made even more special through the process of becoming Hospitality Assured,” said Pam and Tony Armbrister, owners, Fernandez Bay on Cat Island.
“The Corner Hotel welcomes Hospitality Assured. It has given us the opportunity to modify and fine tune all of our processes. At the same time our team has realized how much what we do and how we do it, influences our customers. Our team is now re-inspired, reinvigorated and reenergized to continuously meet and exceed our guest expectations and experiences,” added Nina Maynard, the owner and managing director of The Corner Hotel in Nassau.
Similar sentiments were expressed by the remaining properties, all of which also have access to benchmarking data from the U.K. and the Caribbean so that they can monitor their performance relative to other small properties and have best practice indicators.
The Bahamas Hotel Association, through its STEMM programme, which was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, supported a number of small businesses by providing business advisors to help the properties to get to the stage where they could present themselves for assessment. Hospitality Assured is also endorsed by the Ministry of Tourism in the Bahamas.
“The Bahamas is blessed with a vast untapped potential of wonderful small properties throughout our many islands. Many are just waiting to be discovered. Hospitality Assured helps provide guests just that…an assurance that these properties have put in place procedures and practices aimed at ensuring guest satisfaction,” said Robert ‘Sandy’ Sands, President of the Bahamas Hotel Association.
Hospitality Assured is a certification programme promoting service and business excellence in tourism and hospitality companies. It is owned by the Institute of Hospitality in the United Kingdom, and managed by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) in the region. Caribbean supporting institutions include the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, which collects and distributes benchmarking data on the programme, as well as the Caricom Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), which is the region’s assessment body for the programme. Funding support for the programme is currently being provided by the European Union/PRO€INVEST programme and the Organization of American States. Hospitality Assured is currently being run on a pilot phase in eight countries, which are Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.
The CTO is seeking to get tourism/hospitality businesses signed on to the Hospitality Assured programme in the eight (8) pilot countries, and has a number of attractive incentives to offer during this pilot phase of the programme.
