The Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) network recently launched a new toolkit to encourage more tourism businesses in the area to take a trip down the road to service excellence.

The Hospitality Assured (HA) Suitcase helps businesses embark on a journey which will deliver excellence to their customers and better performance for their businesses and communities.

Hospitality Assured is a world class standard for service and business excellence in the hospitality industry.  It is operated by the Hotel and Catering International Management Association (HCIMA), the professional body for hospitality, leisure and tourism.

Employer surveys show that one in three tourism businesses fail to achieve their business objectives due to lack of skills within their workforce and highlight that a significant number of businesses have asked for more help in identifying their needs.

Central Highland Taxis are just one of the businesses on the road to business excellence with the help of HA.  Samantha Johnston, managing director of the company, said: "The most useful part of Hospitality Assured is its flexibility.  It is not a prescriptive tool, it provides guidance for each individual business to work out what they need to do to improve their own service - that has been invaluable."

Audrey Maclennan, HIE senior development manager, said "Hospitality Assured is the first step for businesses to take if they want to provide service excellence and get better results all round.  It's about enabling the industry to continuously improve and has been primarily driven by the industry ensuring it supplies exactly what they need, with HIE providing a supporting role.

 "We want to help tourism businesses unlock the potential of both the business and its workforce, whatever the size of business - HA is as useful to a tour bus company as it is to a hotel.  Everyone's journey to excellence will be different, the business sets the route it wants to take.  HIE aim to make this task for tourism businesses as simple, straightforward and appealing as possible through the development of a single preferred route to tourism skills support and better business performance using the Hospitality Assured management framework.

"HA can help businesses identify areas that are strongest as well as those that need improvement. Many businesses who have achieved HA have told us that the self assessment stage of HA provides a rare and valuable opportunity for them to determine how their business is performing and helps them identify what their development needs are."

Hospitality Assured is also at the heart of HIE's tourism skills strategy, it is being piloted as the entry point for tourism skills support and primary business and service improvement tool for tourism operators. Tourism is extremely important to the economy of the Highlands and Islands, generating £949 million annually in revenue and employing in excess of 20,000 people accounting for 13 per cent of total employment, which is why HIE tailored HA to not just signal a businesses commitment to excellence but also to shape and develop the business even further.

John Burchell, the HIE network's HA supplier said:  "Hospitality Assured is not achieved easily but it is worth the effort. It is an ongoing process that provides a series of performance indicators against which an organisation can continually judge and measure itself. The hallmark of a Hospitality Assured organisation is one that has a desire to exceed customer expectations.

"HA is the beginning of a journey for tourism businesses and operators.  It helps businesses to continually improve the service they offer, energise staff and enthuse customers while helping to raise standards which is increasingly important when competing for visitors in a world-wide market where customers are becoming more and more discerning."

As you would expect from an internationally recognised quality standard, the process for achieving the award is rigorous, taking into account customer opinion and considering all the aspects of service from the customer's point of view.

Alan Rankin, chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Forum, added: "HA is about overall business enhancement, as well as offering support to owners and managers to lead a culture of service excellence within their own venture.  If we are to achieve the 50 per cent growth ambition by 2015 the tourism sector needs to develop its human capital; people and what they deliver are a core part of the tourism product. If service quality is to be delivered a committed and skilled workforce is required which in turn requires employers to exercise good employment practice, there are fantastic business benefits for employers who put the effort into developing the skills of their workforce."

The HA suitcase is only part of the entire support package on offer to businesses who have signed up for the Hospitality Assured route to excellence in the Highlands and Islands. This unique package of support is being pioneered with the help of businesses who have already achieved Hospitality Assured and is funded through the HIE network and the European Social Fund (ESF). The specially tailored package includes:

•  Access to on-line Self assessment and Ask A Coach service (due to launch later this month.)
• Access to the expertise of a Hospitality Assured business coach who will work with the business on a one-to-one basis from self assessment through to accreditation, either by phone, in person or on-line.
• Access to an event programme called Short Breaks; consisting of learning journeys to visit the best in class in your sector, benchmarking visits, networking opportunities, seminars, staff development days and business planning workshops.
• The HA suitcase to act as a travel companion to the business throughout their journey to excellence - to dip in and out of as needed. It's full of useful tips and guidance on how to reach service excellence.
• Grant support for first time accreditation.

Philippe Rossiter FHCIMA, chief executive of the Hotel and Catering International Management Association,  said of HIE's approach: "We are delighted that Hospitality Assured is proving such a boon to hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise network area, helping to drive up service standards in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. HIE is to be congratulated on its innovative approach in encouraging the pursuit of service excellence, especially its development of the Hospitality Assured Suitcase toolkit, which is a further example of the valuable support now available to all tourism businesses in the region."

For more information about Hospitality Assured and how the HIE's tourism skills strategy is being rolled out in your area, contact your local enterprise company (LEC).  Staff at the LECs can help to identify training needs, source relevant training provision and consider ways of funding it.

LECs work closely with the local tourism sector and local training providers to help influence local training provision and often organise courses which cover both general and specific areas - this helps supply the training which is demanded by the sector.