IHG aims high with new accreditation

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Category: Hotel

Created on Friday, 20 January 2012 10:51

AIM is the industry’s only accreditation scheme and is a quality mark for meetings and events bookers. The accredited group is made of IHG’s top performing Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels, all of which underwent rigorous quality checks to ensure they met the high standards required. In fact, the hotels more than surpassed the standard required, achieving an average pass rate of 93%, compared to the AIM prerequisite of 65%.

IHG’s David Taylor who specialises in Meetings and Events for the UK&I Managed Estate said: “Joining MIA (Meetings Industry Association) and receiving AIM accreditation reflects a much wider ambition to become the market leader within the meetings and events sector, and is recognition of our effort and investment into this area of our business over the last year. Our aspiration is to achieve this quality mark for the whole estate, which I am fully confident we will deliver.

He added: “We have focussed heavily on listening to the market and understanding our customer’s needs, and through our recent customer engagement survey have developed a core framework which enables us to create a more compelling offer that will see our hotels recognised as major players within the market.

IHG is dedicated to improving standards for business guests across their estate, a commitment which is demonstrated in the £4m investment of Kensington Forum’s meetings and events space - including the introduction of a new state-of-the-art meetings facility, Business Lounge and dedicated Business Host.

Robert Alley, Meetings and Events Director for the UK&I Managed Estate comments: “We are committed to providing a first class service to our guests and have recently invested over a £1m in training and staff development to ensure service standards are delivered. We’re constantly striving to innovate and develop every aspect of our meetings and events products from our healthy food menus to our in-room facilities. Today’s meetings provider must be able to get everything right first time, so we have created the ‘Your Meeting, Your Way’ pledge, designed to help our guests get the most from their meetings. We believe we have a fantastic offer for our business guests, and to prove it we offer a money-back guarantee if they are less than satisfied.”*

Praising Taylor’s decision to bring IHG properties into MIA membership, Jane Longhurst, MIA Chief Executive said, “I commend David on his strategic vision and look forward to working closely with him and his team to develop IHG’s meetings and events product. I believe it can become one of the shining examples of excellence within the meetings and events sector and is perfectly suited for AIM.”

*Refunds only apply to pre-booked requests. The hotel must have been given every opportunity to put the matter right at the time. The relative retail value of any individual package item only will be taken into consideration for refund if meeting sold as a package.