Forbes Standards: Unlocking Excellence and Top Ratings 

In the world of luxury travel and hospitality, a ranking from Forbes Travel Magazine serves as a hallmark of prestige and excellence. Achieving a high rating from this authoritative source can elevate a brand’s reputation, drive customer engagement, and significantly boost business. However, receiving this stamp of approval is no small feat. It necessitates not only knowing what the stringent Forbes standards entail, but also implementing self-inspections, rigorous training and performance-based recognition to prepare your team for daily excellence. In this article, we will provide actionable insights on how you can optimize your services to stand out in this competitive landscape. 

What are the Forbes Standards by the Forbes Travel Guide?

Forbes Standards are a set of guidelines introduced by Forbes Travel Guide back in 1958, when it was known as the Mobil Travel Guide creating the Five-Star rating system for hotels, restaurants and spas. Originally designed as a guidebook for American drivers, it was responsible for creating the first-ever Five-Star rating for hospitality establishments within the United States. 

Currently, the system evaluates standards based on up to 900 objective criteria, and they have established an independent, global rating system for luxury hotels, restaurants, spas, and ocean cruise ships in the United States, Europe, and recently China.

How Do You Get Rated By Forbes?

In order to receive a rating from Forbes Travel Guide, hotels, restaurants, and spas must undergo a rigorous evaluation process. This includes a thorough inspection by a team of anonymous professional inspectors who use the 900 objective criteria standards to assess the property’s service, facilities, quality of guest experiences and emotional experience. 

The criteria for these guidelines derive from the Five-Star Rating System of Forbes Travel Guide. This rating system evaluates properties on a scale of one to five stars, with an emphasis on exceptional service and it includes: 

• Authentic guest experience
• Evolution of well-being
• Sustainability and luxury
• Demanding guest expectations
• Relaxed luxury

Forbes 5 Star Standards of Service

Forbes Travel Guide primarily evaluates luxury hotels and restaurants. When it comes to Forbes hotel standards or Forbes restaurant standards for 5 star ratings, the standards are generally clear-cut, leaving little room for subjectivity. The evaluation process involves many questions that are answerable with a simple yes or no, making the assessment quite straightforward.

Receiving a 5-star rating from Forbes Travel Guide is the ultimate recognition for a property, signifying unparalleled luxury and guest satisfaction. Properties that attain this esteemed rating are regarded as some of the best in the world. Every year, Forbes Travel Guide evaluates data to establish the criteria that must be met to attain and uphold each Star-Rating classification., and they even publish the Star Award Winners listed each year these.

3 Influencing Factors for Forbes 5 Star Standards

Exceptional & Personalized Service: Properties that have a 5-star rating offer exceptional service consistently to their guests and they expect a high level of personalized services, tailored to their preferences and needs. The staff members are attentive, knowledgeable, and committed to fulfilling every guest’s requirements

Attention to Detail: Properties that have been rated as five-star put a great deal of effort into every aspect of their establishment to ensure that their guests’ experience is flawless. Every detail, from the decoration of the rooms to the design of the public spaces, is carefully planned to create an atmosphere of luxury.

Luxurious Amenities: Luxurious amenities are a hallmark of 5-star properties, providing guests with a variety of features to enhance their stay. These amenities include high-quality linens, premium toiletries, cutting-edge technology, and much more.

The 5 Star Rating is about aiming to go above and beyond with your standards, engaging with the guest to understand what they are looking for before asking for any help. Eventually, to achieve a Five-Star, Four-Star, or Recommended rating, it is necessary to successfully complete the independent inspection process overseen by Forbes Travel Guide. 

As of 2023, Forbes has publicly announced the recipients of their prestigious Star Awards. Our customers Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel, Castiglion del Bosco, Rosewood London and many other locations have successfully ranked at the top of the list as a 5-star rating hotel. 

In addition to Forbes Standards, these luxury properties often also comply with LQA standards, creating their own internal auditing process to monitor compliance.

Forbes Travel Guide Rating System

A strict service and facility evaluation process is used by Forbes Travel Guide to evaluate almost 2,000 hotels, restaurants, and spas every year. They are clear that Star Ratings cannot be bought by anyone and every evaluation is genuine. 

Each rating is earned solely through an inspection conducted by anonymous Forbes staff members who give ratings in stars (Five-Star, Four-Star, or Recommended) based on objective criteria. Receiving a Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating is a significant honor.

Each location will be rated on a 5-star or 4-star system and will be categorized accordingly. Additionally, once you earn your stars, there is a minimum rating requirement that must be maintained over time.

How to Achieve the Highest Forbes Rating with Self-Inspections 

Achieving the highest rating with Forbes Standards requires a meticulous approach. This involves crafting a clear and succinct mission statement, developing a comprehensive strategy, and demonstrating a proven track record of success. 

An interview with an expert Forbes Travel Guide inspector who has visited over 700 hotels, restaurants, and spas worldwide shared by Hospitality Net highlighted 4 most essential ideas garnered from the inspector’s experience to meet the Forbes Standards: 

1. maintain transparency in your operations
2. showcase exceptional organizational management skills
3. anticipating customer’s needs and exciting their expectations 
4. prepare thoroughly for the official Forbes inspection in advance, before they even walk through the door

By integrating an inspection app into your inspection process, you can greatly enhance your quality scores and ensure that no important details are missed. This app enables you to oversee every aspect of the inspection while keeping an eye on everything

Quick compliance with the standards: standardize your procedures and ensure that everyone is aware of every Forbes standard relevant to their area, with frequent inspections and digital checklists in everyone’s pocket. Schedule mandatory self-audits and monitor your performance. 

Efficiency: paperless, quicker audits and reports resulting in significant savings in terms of time and resources. Forbes Travel Guide highly values sustainability, and it can be incorporated into every aspect of your operations and it’s a great way to show your customers that you care about the environment. 

Performance Analysis: The power of digital audits is in their ability to provide live, accurate insights and aggregated analytics. With better insights, you’ll gain a dependable method for assessing the effectiveness of your staff’s work, pinpointing areas of improvements and taking instant action. This will translate into a better guest experience.

With clear automated scores, you can implement a performance-based recognition system for your teams.

Customization: Tailoring digital audits to your organization’s unique needs to ensure that pertinent elements are addressed throughout the inspections. Customization ensures that every detail is accounted for during the inspection process, leading to a more precise and efficient analysis of standards implementation. 

Additionally, with a customized checklist, you can simultaneously conduct audits for Forbes standards, brand standards, or LQA audits.

Communication: attach photos, annotations and comments, share reports instantly. Digital inspections provide a seamless, paperless way to improve communication and collaboration between different teams and departments, resulting in an optimized performance and a better Forbes rating. 

Why is GoAudits the best software for your Forbes Travel Guide Standards inspections? 

Choose the best hotel inspection software to help you with the Forbes standards, without paperwork and heavy admin workload. With GoAudits, Forbes inspections can be simplified by automating time-consuming tasks and it enables a meticulous tracking of every detail during the inspection process and beyond – ensuring that scores are consistently maintained at the highest level of excellence. The app provides your business with a comprehensive set of many other benefits: 

• easier data collection in the field with smart forms
• instant reporting to share audit information quickly, pinpointing every non-conformances or highlighting  critical  non-conformances
• smart dashboards for real-time analysis
• corrective actions that can be assigned to specific team members, internally or externally
• vast library of audit checklist templates which can be customized, to get started as quickly as possible.

Both your company and the external auditors will be able to access up-to-date information about the performance of your inspection at any time. The GoAudits inspection software has been endorsed by many prestigious clients and it was featured by Capterra as one of the highest-rated and most popular software solutions on the market in 2023. 

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