by Dr. Klaus Jamin

The international quality management system ISO 9001 is slowly, but steadily making its way into the hotel sector. Partly favored for tangible economic reasons, such as banks incorporating the management of a hotel in assessing its creditworthiness, a quality management system also cuts costs, reduces customer complaints and motivates staff. An ever rising number of hotels are further having themselves certified under ISO 14001 (international environment management system) in order to meet the needs of environmentally conscious visitors.

A number of German hotels have already had themselves certified under the new ISO 9001:2008 standard. Their number pales, however, against the amount of medium-sized enterprises to have realized that pursuing a certification means not only additional work, but brings with it advantages in consumer acceptance and satisfaction.

In Africa, certifications under these standards are much less common. Kenya’s Leisure Lodge Resort (www.leisurelodgeresort.com) has now successfully taken the step towards quality management. They did so not because they wanted a certificate to show, but because Manager John Mutua is convinced that customer satisfation on the basis of quality management is a good prerequisite and unique selling point in the ever growing competition in tourism.

After all, quality management analyzes not only the products offered, but involves the optimization of processes and operations in order to satisfy customers now and in the future. Several months of training were necessary to accomplish this task (even though, going by staff opinion, everything is running just fine the way it is).

Volker Hasse, an internationally renowned expert from Berlin, and Tonio Knies used said months to prepare the training of the staff and the analysis of the hotel. The resulting quality manual is respectable, at least in the eyes of auditor Prof Dr Klaus Jamin of certifying institution IQM (www.qm-germany.de), who had specially flown in for a one-week analysis of the resort’s quality management system. During his one-week stay, all departments were inspected for accordance with the quality management system as described in the manual. More than 70 decision makers were interviewed, and visits to all departments, such as kitchen, service area and security, were part of the audit.

Klaus Jamin and GM John Mutua

The staff alone offered more than 140 suggestions for improvement that will be implemented in the course of the following months.

Thanks to careful preparation, the ISO certificate could be handed over without any problems in a big ceremony. Leisure Lodge will now continue to do internal audits, as well as be inspected once every three years by an external auditor.

From left to right: John Shabaan, Quality Manager, K. Jamin, IQM Auditor and John Mutua, GM.