Culture Shock

“Achieving a Guest Obsessed Culture”

Andrew GammageHead of Quality & Guest Insight

How Premier Inn's has developed a Guest obsessed culture

Key Activities & Programmes

Agenda

How Guest Recommend feedback has become an integral part of Premier Inn’s business

Team member behaviours

Brand decisions

About Premier Inn

Premier Inn history

• First Travel Inn opened in 1987

• 1998 - 200 sites

• 2002 - Largest UK hotel chain

• 2004 - Premier Lodge acquired

• 2006 - International

• 2007 - Re-brand to Premier Inn

• 2009 - 550 Hotels

Premier Inn goals

• Premier Inn’s strategy is to move from being a “great” Brand to a “world class” Brand

• Two key components– Putting the guest at the heart of our business– Engaging all Team members in the journey

• Understanding guest experience through – Measuring Brand standards– Ongoing the Guest research

The Premier Inn bedroom

People & Service

Good Night Guarantee

• Launched in 2001

• Understand issues and fix problems

• Continuous improvement

• Customer retention

• Team members empowered to fix problems

• Consistency of product & service

Brand Standards

“Delivering the Basics”

Brand Standards & Audit

• Robust Brand Operating Standards – Hardlines which must be delivered– Guidelines - opportunities to tailor our

approach & “wow” individual guests

• Independent measurement through a comprehensive Brand Audit

• External professional audit company

• Every site audited twice a year (minimum)

• Tough consequences of failure

Guest Obsession

“Using Guest Feedback to deliver a Guest obsessed

Culture”

Guest RecommendProgramme conception

• Previous guest satisfaction measured via a twice-yearly brand-level postal survey

• Requirement for more frequent feedback at individual site level

• Move from satisfaction to advocacy -Guest Recommend

• ORC International worked with Premier Inn to implement monthly site-level measurement of guest satisfaction

How the Programme Works

Email sent to Guests within 24hrs of checks out

Portal updated daily with the previous day’s surveys

Premier Inn can action findings within a couple of days of the guest’s stay

Guest clicks on email link and completes online survey (1 to 5 scale)

Real-time web-based reporting

Easy access across the organisation

• Quick and easy access for all personnel

• Portal facilitates sharing of best practice– Sites can see their own scores and those of other

Premier Inn hotels– Top 10 sites are showcased at quarterly review

meetings • Enables bottom 10 sites to learn from their example

• Sites can track their own verbatim comments

• Over half the hotels log on every day to keep track of their scores and read their comments

Guest Recommend Programme

Outcomes

Brand levelSite level

Guest obsession is integral

• Our focus on Customers is described as ‘Guest Obsession’

• According to Premier Inn’s MD Patrick Dempsey, the research is “worth its weight in gold”

• By acting on guest feedback, KPI scores continue to increase– Likelihood to recommend– Overall satisfaction– Likelihood to stay again– Value for money

“Our success will be achieved by listening to our

Guests – and reacting quickly and instinctively to their feedback and future

expectations” (Patrick Dempsey, MD, Premier Inn)

Balanced scorecard

• Premier Inn’s balanced scorecard includes the Guest Recommend & Brand Audit score– Key bonus measure

• Guest measures are central to reward & recognition programme

e.g. Conference

• Stretch targets for each site and region– Hotels ‘chase green’ by

exceeding their targets

Valuable insight

“The Guest satisfaction survey has potentially been the biggest change introduced in Premier Inn for many years, giving us

valuable insight.

It tells us exactly what our guests think of the key aspects of the service and product that we provide, including whether or not they

would recommend us to a friend or colleague.

We are committed to ensuring all our guests have a fantastic experience; the feedback really helps us to coach and train our

team members to deliver this.”

Programme impacts on decisions made at a local level

• Portal provides real-time data, all Team members know their performance

• From night porter to housekeeping, they understand how to improve the guest experience

• Hotel Teams can take quicktactical action based on guest feedback

• Sites hold regular meetingsto review feedback

• All sites have a Guest action plan

• GM’s talk to Guests about key focus areas

Informed significant strategic investment decisions

• All brand decisions are underpinned by the likely impact on the Guest

• Key Driver Analysis identifies which elements of the offer most likely to improve guest satisfaction

• Decisions taken as a result of Guest Recommend include:– staff training– ‘Good Night Guarantee’– Breakfast – In-room entertainment – Air-conditioning strategy– Refurbishment programme

Focusing on Premier Inn’s best assets

• “Staff Care” - Key Driver of top box recommend

• Developed enhanced Brand service standards

• Improved staff training

• Use to drive Staff awareness of their impact on the guest experience

• Reward & recognition

Emphasis on Good Night Guarantee

• Guest aware of the Guarantee are more likely to stay again

• Use Recommend to measure check inn standards

• Increased importance in Brand Audit

• Drive awareness

New and improved breakfast

• Review of guest feedback identified that the breakfast offering would benefit from improvement– Specifically food quality and product choice

• New breakfast menus trialled

• Survey used to measure Guest feedback

• New breakfast concepts– New products– Healthy, vegetarian & ‘Superfoods’– All you can eat

• Ratings for breakfast food quality and service are vastly improved as a result

Bedroom refurbishment

• Guest Recommend survey used to assess impact– Six out of ten sites improve their guest

recommend scores– Most sites improve bedroom &r bathroom scores

• Findings help to determine the level of investment for the future bedroom upgrades

• Guest Recommend scores helpprioritise investment

Other Room Upgrades

Entertainment• Survey data identified that 40% of guests did not give a

positive rating for the in-room entertainment• Of those giving a negative score, most wanted to see

Freeview channels included• Fast tracked the introduction of Freeview channels

Air-conditioning• As a value brand, air-conditioning was

not offered as standard• Guest feedback from guests at city centre

locations has driven air conditioningroll-out programme

360º feedback to guests

The future

Evolving programme

• Regular reviews of the Guest Recommend programme– Questionnaire content– Reporting– Portal layout

• More dynamic use of the questionnaire

• Premier Inn Guest panel

• Extending UK programme to cover overseas ventures & Whitbread Restaurants

Thank youQuestions?