“Make guests feel at home while they are away from home” – this is the vision behind every hotel that wants to offer a positive guest experience. But LQA standards do not apply to a typical hotel guest experience. They are one of the driving forces behind the truly memorable luxury hotel operations. LQA standards are the secret door to practices that focus on sumptuous comfort, personalization, luxury, extravagant choices, and conveniences afforded to guests.
What are the LQA Standards for Hotels?
Leading Quality Assurance (LQA) is the global market leader in quality assurance assessments and benchmarking analysis for the luxury hospitality industry. An official document contains predefined LQA inspection checklists measuring 800 quantitative and qualitative hotel standards. You can find several LQA inspection checklist examples in our template library – check the Audit Checklists for Hotels, Vacation Rentals & Leisure Venues industry.
Hotels need to deliver superior facilities and services to offer guests a sense of luxury. In fact, nowadays, even a 3-4 stars hotel can be considered a “luxury hotel”. They have different hotel brand standards in place and even implement the Forbes standards from the Forbes Travel Guide, making it to the list of the top luxurious hotels. However only some of them qualify for the LQA Standards.
Read more about how to implement the Best Practices for Hotel Quality Assurance in 2023.
What makes the LQA Hotel Standards so unique and different?
To be considered for inclusion under the LQA standards, establishments must demonstrate remarkable, unusual characteristics and attain the highest standards in accommodation, service, cuisine, staff, and various amenities. In short, it covers all aspects that affect guests’ comfort, convenience and experience, with a core focus on four main areas: front office, food and beverages, housekeeping, and miscellaneous.
Connection, personalisation, authenticity, and establishing genuine one-on-one relationships will ultimately define the potential of a hotel to meet the LQA standards. All this will be determined with the help of LQA inspections across all hotel areas.
LQA audits are conducted anonymously by external LQA consultants, with a final report covering more than 800 benchmarks, including emotional intelligence and brand-specific standards. The report contains quantitative and qualitative feedback, as well as valuable and actionable insights. However, these external audits will be typically conducted only once a year.
How to ensure consistent excellence year-round without cumbersome admin processes? With a simple app, you can make internal LQA audits more manageable and more efficient. Using GoAudits, you can conduct your own LQA inspections more frequently: on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
You will not only be able to add LQA hotel inspection checklists to your dashboard/reports, but you can also include brand-standard checklists and Forbes standard checklists. As an internal auditing app, GoAudits offers the advantage of having everything in one location for easy reference.
Some of our clients, such as Rosewood Hotels, Radisson Hotels and The Luxury Collection by Marriott can confirm the advantages of using the app. As Manon Lott, quality manager at Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel said:
“GoAudits helps our teams realise where they need to improve on the standards in order to achieve an excellent level of service. Managers can work on Action Plans using the reports generated by the platform”.
Read more about how to ensure quality & safety across all your locations with efficient digital checks using the GoAudits app.
LQA hotel auditing checklists – frequency and best practices
Leading Quality Assurance LQA checklists allow hotels to conduct frequent internal audits to evaluate their service delivery, enrich guests’ experiences, and improve their overall performance in their locations. Each LQA hotel audit must have a quality score of over 95%.
With the GoAudits Instant Reports feature, you can generate professional and comprehensive reports in real time. You can choose Simple reports, Trends reports or Summary reports that include smart customizable scoring by area/topic, making the LQA inspections easy and fast.
Using the user-friendly GoAudits app for hotel inspections eliminates the need for multiple tools, complex software or hiring expensive external consultancies. Read more about the benefits of comprehensive reporting in this article: Hospitality: how to track, measure & improve brand standards with a self-auditing app.
Benefits of internal hotel LQA inspections with GoAudits
The GoAudits reporting feature offers you real-time reporting, and it’s automatically shared with the relevant parties. Reports can be customized according to your organization’s needs, and smart scoring allows you to measure the overall success of your LQA standards audit.
In this way, you will be able to identify areas that require improvement, taking action immediately to ensure that your guests experience an exceptional stay.
According to J.D. Power North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, a superior guest experience directly translates into increased profits and a better reputation for hoteliers. The Customer Satisfaction Index Ranking is based on numerical score rates. The company’s first KPI study analyzes the activities that are most likely to positively affect the customer’s experience.
It is not surprising that the Ritz-Carlton Hotel ranked first in the luxury category in the 2022 NAGSI Study. The opportunity to work with such an incredible luxury hotel chain gave us a direct insight into the positive effects that in-house inspections can have on a top brand. It is undeniable that LQA standards play an imperative role in determining performance, revenue, and customer loyalty.
Through internal audits conducted by your own staff using GoAudits, receive instant feedback on each of your properties. Take immediate action based on the reports’ smart scoring feature. Luxury hotels are in a state of profound change in their concept, and the demands of customers are increasing as well. As Angelo Bonati said: “Luxury is attention to detail, originality, exclusivity and above all quality.”
With the help of LQA standards you will be able to further elevate your luxury standards and exceed the expectations of your guests. And on top of all, with GoAudits, you can get started right away. Check out our template library for LQA checklists. Here are a few LQA hotel checklists:
- LQA Hotel Food Beverages Audit Checklist
- LQA Hotel Reception Audit Checklist
- LQA Hotel Restaurant Services Checklist
- Hotel LQA Room Dining Audit Checklist
- LQA Hotel Room Audit Checklist
If you are new to GoAudits, make sure to download the GoAudits app on iOS, Android, or you can use the web version. Additionally, GoAudits can be tried for 14 days with no commitment or credit card required. You can schedule a call with our exceptional Customer Success Team if you are still not sure if it is the right choice for your hotel.
