Customer Success

LaTour Hotels & Resorts manage operational standards across all properties with GoAudits

Over a period of 12 months with GoAudits:

30+

hotels and resorts

20,000+

inspections

$8,000

saved on paperwork

100s

of hours saved

Industry

Hospitality – Hotels & Resorts

About

LaTour Hotels & Resorts is one the most successful privately held hotel management companies in the United States. It specializes in luxury fractional, private residence club, hotel and mixed-use resort developments. LaTour Hotels and Resorts currently operates around 30 luxury properties across the US, Canada and Central America – including four-star golf, ski, urban, and oceanfront hotels and resorts. The company also partners with brand affiliates such as Choice Hotels and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

Location

United States

The requirement: more efficient quality assurance audits

LaTour Hotels & Resorts manage dozens of properties across the US, Canada and Central America, including a variety of luxury oceanfront, ski, urban and golf hotels & resorts. LaTour customers and owners expect world-class quality, consistently delivered in every resort.

Kristin Ingram, as the Regional Director of Resort Operations, is responsible for creating, maintaining and training on operational policies and procedures across all LaTour properties. Before GoAudits, Kristin and her team used to audit the brand standards using complex spreadsheets – which was very time-consuming. Kristin explains her requirements:

“We were performing over 30 major quality assurance audit inspections each year, in various parts of the U.S. and Caribbean. I utilized my cellphone camera to take images of deficiencies and/or good observations to reference, as well as a 12-page Excel spreadsheet to document and calculate quality assurance scores. My primary reason for reaching out to GoAudits was to identify a software that would help us manage this process more efficiently.”

Expanding from yearly audits to daily checks in every resort

Successfully using GoAudits for yearly audits, Kristin saw the potential to expand the digital checks to standard operating procedures in every hotel. “What began as a solution to my specific challenge, blossomed into a full blown launch of GoAudits for every resort within our management company portfolio,” explains Kristin. “We decided to go digital with daily operation checklists across all our properties.”

LaTour Hotels & Resorts manage a variety of oceanfront, ski, golf and urban properties.

Daily operational checks in every property, on a user-friendly app

In addition to the yearly quality assurance audits from the headquarters, each hotel and resort team uses GoAudits to manage day-to-day operations and uphold the high brand standards. Kristin highlights how user-friendly the GoAudits system is: “The mobile app is easy for all users to utilize, and the Admin portal is simple once you get familiar with it. I worked with GoAudits to create over 30 different digital inspection forms that are used daily to help our hotels operate more efficiently.”

Asked about the reaction from the staff on the ground, Kristin says: “There may have been some initial resistance to change. But once the GMs saw how much money they were saving in supplies and payroll, it caught on like wildfire!”

In a 12-month period, the company conducted over 20,000 audits and inspections across its property portfolio – replacing over 20,000 paper or excel-based audits. Managers and staff members use the GoAudits mobile app for various daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly checks such as:

Example – GoAudits inspections checklists for hotels

Daily operations huddle checklist
Daily pre-arrival maintenance check
Self-audit of common areas and amenities, units and general policies
Pool and fitness center checklist
Spa room sanitization check
Room housekeeping checks
Room and Unit QA
Room deep-cleaning report
Maintenance and safety inspections: AC filters, boilers, fire extinguishers, ladders, PPE…
Resort asset inspections
…and various other self-assessments of compliance with brand standards

When the properties were closed or getting ready to re-open due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the hotel teams have also been using GoAudits for various self-audits: closed resort inspections, resort re-opening checks, re-opening room checks, hotel sanitization procedures and more.

Efficient audits, improved standards and $8000 saved each year

With each resort performing frequent self-inspections in addition to yearly quality assurance audits, the team has seen improvements in operational standards. “GoAudits has allowed me to be more efficient by providing immediate inspection feedback to resorts. Overall we are seeing an upward trend during our resort audits, primarily because the general managers are performing self-inspections, practicing the standard operating procedures daily,” says Kristin.

Seamless audits, eliminated paperwork and all the information stored in one place – this has brought efficiencies, concrete savings and better communication between the teams. “This digital auditing process assisted our management company in becoming better at document retention, saving on printing and paper, as well as saving countless hours for the whole team,” explains Kristin. “I’d estimate that last year, we saved over $8k by performing digital inspections, not printing documentation of daily huddle meetings, etc.”

"Once the GMs saw how much money they were saving in supplies and payroll, it caught on like wildfire!"

Kristin Ingram

Regional Director of Resort Operations
Latour Hotels & Resorts

Without wasting a lot of time auditing, collating data and documenting issues, Kristin and her team can access more data and view it in a digestible format, in real time. With better visibility on quality, they are able to quickly assess what needs action, create an improvement roadmap based on accurate information, and coordinate action across the property portfolio.

Improvement roadmap and efficient resource allocation

The customized reporting in real time enables the corporate team to easily see trends and recurring issues across the property portfolio, plan the future and allocate resources accordingly. “GoAudits provides us with trend reports that assist us in our annual budgeting processes. In addition to the trends throughout our entire portfolio, we now know the top 5 issues for each property and can reserve funds to correct them”, says Kristin.

Examples of GoAudits inspection reports with trends

Furthermore, the real-time reporting helps address any critical issues faster. Documenting any accidents/incidents allows to better manage the risks and liability of the company.

Regarding the collaboration with GoAudits, Kristin highlights the willingness of the team to customize the system, making sure it meets the particular requirements of the customer business:

“The development and customer service team of GoAudits is readily available to provide guidance and support – whether it is the chat function on their website, via email or phone! They have listened to our feedback and if an item needed adding to the platform, they worked to develop it.”

Find more information on the GoAudits Inspection App, and check our library of hotel audit checklist templates.

Last year we probably saved over $8k by performing digital inspections, not printing documentation of daily huddle meetings, etc.

GoAudits provides us with trend reports that assist us in our annual budgeting processes. In addition to the portfolio trends, we now know the top 5 issues for each property and can reserve funds to correct them.