Starwood Renews Brand Assurance Program

HORSHAM, PA— Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has renewed and extended its business relationship with LRA Worldwide, a provider of specialized brand performance, quality assurance and customer satisfaction consulting services to the global hospitality and travel industries. “The program is highly focused on elements that are critical to our guests experience and satisfaction, what we refer to as our loyalty drivers,” said Diana Oreck,svp/operations for Starwood. “LRA has been a longtime partner of Starwood, and the two organizations have worked closely together to successfully enhance our measurement processes and quality metrics.” “We have taken several steps to improve the consistency of our product and service quality,” said Glenn Tuckman, svp/North America hotel operations. “Starwood was the first hospitality company in the world to embrace Six Sigma, the internationally recognized program that dramatically accelerates and maximizes business performance.” Six Sigma has been rolled-out across all of Starwoods brands. “Six Sigma provides critical focus on the customer, and over time, will help deliver a dramatic improvement in our hotels bottom lines. We incorporated Six Sigma into the Brand Assurance Program we designed with LRA Worldwide, where our focus is on zero defect performance on the elements that define the brand,” he said. “The extension of our relationship with Starwood will enable us to further enhance the quality measurement processes and performance metrics that we developed with Starwood for its brands,” said Stan Lashner, COO/LRA Worldwide. “Starwoods current brand assurance program measures the key elements of the guest experience and the items that define the brand, including the Starwood Preferred Guest program, the Westin Heavenly Bed and other essential standards. We have designed one global platform that integrates with Six Sigma and can be customized by any Starwood division or a brand, including Westin, Sheraton, W, The Luxury Collection and Four Points by Sheraton.”