Hospitality Assured Business Excellence winners announced

The full list of winners were announced by Professor Andrew Lockwood, Associate Dean & Forte Professor of Hospitality Management Surrey University, at the Institute of Hospitality's Annual lunch which took place at the Royal Horseguards, One Whitehall Place, London. Ann Corrigan FIH, managing director of Hospitality Assured (HA), presented the winners with their awards. "The awards recognise those organisations who have a commitment to business excellence and therefore to exceptional customer service. These businesses can be recommended wholeheartedly to any customer because of their ambition to constantly improve the service that they offer to their clients." The well deserved winner of the Overall Highest Score was The Møller Centre, Management Training & Conference Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge who have been adherents of the Scheme for more than nine years and whose performance on the Hospitality Assured Benchmark has risen year on year. Director Gillian Holdom, explained: "The Møller Centre has scooped a series of awards this year which recognise our commitment to excellent customer service. We are leading the way in dedicated training and conference facilities – not just a venue but an experience. "Hospitality Assured accreditation has provided us with a regular rigorous assessment to monitor our service delivery against our customer quality promise. It drives us to continually innovate and implement best practice to the benefit of our clients." Other winners were Fiona Ambrose who received the award for Highest Scoring Newcomer for 2008, and VisitScotland who received the award for Most Innovative Use of the Hospitality Assured Standard in 2008. Riddell Graham, director of Strategic Partnerships, VisitScotland, concluded: "Hospitality Assured helped to dramatically increase the emphasis on our core customers – indeed HA was instrumental in defining our core customers, right at a time when we were reorganising the structure of our business. "The key with Hospitality Assured was the fact that it was easy to understand; more so than many other accreditations that we looked at."