Culture Shock
“Achieving a Guest Obsessed Culture”
Andrew Gammage
Head of Quality & Guest Insight
Agenda

How Premier Inn's has developed a Guest obsessed culture

Key Activities & Programmes
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 Recommend
Programme conception
• Previous guest satisfaction measured via a twiceyearly 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
Guest clicks on email link and completes online
survey (1 to 5 scale)
Portal updated daily with the previous day’s surveys
Premier Inn can action findings within a couple of
days of the guest’s stay
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 level
Site 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
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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 quick
tactical action based on
guest feedback
• Sites hold regular meetings
to 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:
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–
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–
–
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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 help
prioritise 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 conditioning
roll-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 you
Questions?