Hotel quality management: standards, audits and follow-up

Every hotel has standards written down somewhere. The harder part is knowing whether guests actually experience them, in every location and on every shift. That is the work of hotel quality management: defining what the guest journey should look like, checking it in the real building, and turning what you find into changes that stick.

William Yarney has worked in hospitality since the age of 16, from independent restaurants and luxury hotels to members clubs such as Soho House. Today he is Quality & Implementation Manager at The Social Hub, a hybrid hospitality concept in Amsterdam that combines a hotel, student accommodation, coworking, bars and restaurants under one roof. His role rests on two pillars, quality and implementation, and the way he connects them is a useful model for any hotel group.

What hotel quality management actually covers

In William's view, quality starts before anyone visits a property. He works with the product and experience teams to define what the guest journey and the product standards should be. Only once that picture is clear does it make sense to go out and measure against it. Without a shared definition, every general manager fills in the gaps with their own idea of good service. Why service can matter more than facilities is the subject of a related article on the independent luxury hotel.

The second step is the visit itself, and the third is what happens with the results. A report that sits in an inbox changes nothing. In William's approach, the findings go two ways: to the people running the hotel, and into the plans for what the company develops next.

“I then make sure that the general managers have all of these insights that they can use to obviously better the experience for our guests, but then I also use these insights to feed into our experience road map.”

William Yarney, 2:29

That double use is the core of hotel quality management as he describes it. The same observation helps a manager fix something this week and helps the head office decide what to develop next.

Auditing like a mystery guest, from the inside

William compares his location visits to the work of a mystery guest, with one difference: he audits from an internal perspective. He is not an anonymous outsider scoring a hotel. He is a colleague who knows the standards and the brand, and who comes back with insights the general manager can use. A related article explains why independent hotels need a hotel mystery shopper.

For a hotel that wants to set up something similar, his description points to a few clear criteria:

• Standards are defined first, together with the teams that own the product and the experience.
• The audit follows the guest journey as a guest would live it, location by location.
• The general manager receives the insights directly, so they can act on them.
• The same insights are collected centrally and feed into the experience roadmap.

The internal angle also changes the tone. Because the auditor is part of the organisation, a visit can become support rather than inspection. William's recent two weeks in Rome show this: a new property had just opened, things were still being set up, and the team asked him to come over and help across a wide range of tasks.

From audit findings to an experience roadmap

Quality data is most valuable when it shapes the future, not only when it corrects the past. William uses what he sees in the hotels to inform the experience roadmap, the list of things the company still needs to develop. If the same friction appears in several locations, that is not a local problem for one manager to solve. It is a signal that the product or the process needs to change.

This is a practical lesson for groups of any size. Collect findings in a way that lets you compare locations. Look for patterns rather than single incidents. And make sure the people who decide on new products and processes actually see what the auditors see.

Implementation: where standards meet daily operations

The second pillar of William's role is implementation. Every year the company sets strategic goals, and he takes on everything that affects the operational teams, from the general managers down. That might be a new system, a new process or a specific project. When colleagues in HR or tech want to introduce something, he is the first operational contact who asks which steps are needed for it to succeed.

His approach follows a simple sequence that any hotel can copy:

• Agree what needs to change and which operational teams it affects.
• Write an implementation plan that sets out how the change will be rolled out.
• Define in advance what success looks like.
• Bring the results back to the right people, so they can keep the approach or change it.

Linking quality and implementation in one role makes sense. The person who checks whether standards are lived is also the person who helps introduce new ones, so the gap between the plan at head office and the reality in the hotel gets smaller.

Quality starts with how you treat your team

Standards are delivered by people, and William is clear that hospitality has had to rethink how it treats them. He sees COVID as a hard reset that forced the industry to look internally at how employees were treated.

For quality, this matters directly. Staff need to feel heard. When someone gives feedback, William believes you should go back to them, explain that you listened and say what you will do about it. Clear opportunities for growth matter too, so people are not working blindly without knowing where they can go next. A related article looks at how to improve guest satisfaction by putting people first.

“I think now it's all about making sure that you look after your people and also understanding what the guests want.”

William Yarney, 24:02

He adds a business argument. Finding staff is getting harder and training new people costs a lot of money, so keeping the team you have is part of protecting your standards.

Technology should support the experience, not replace it

Many quality questions today are really technology questions. William's answer is yes and no: technology helps, but everything depends on how a business uses it. QR ordering makes it easy for guests to order, for example. But if the staff only drop off drinks and never have time to talk with guests, the experience suffers.

“Technology, in my opinion, should always be used to kind of aid the experience, whether it's the guest experience or the employee experience.”

William Yarney, 22:28

That gives quality managers a simple test for any new tool. Does it free up time for the human part of service, or does it take that time away? Hospitality, as he puts it, has always been built around people. You can watch the full conversation to hear how he links these themes.

Frequently asked questions

What is hotel quality management?

It is the work of defining what the guest journey and product standards should be, checking whether each location delivers them, and using the findings to improve. In the approach described here, the insights go to the general managers so they can act, and they also feed into a roadmap that shows what the company still needs to develop.

How is an internal quality audit different from a mystery guest visit?

A classic mystery guest is an anonymous outsider. An internal auditor works like a mystery guest but knows the standards and the brand from the inside. That makes the visit more useful for the general manager, who gets concrete insights, and it allows the auditor to support a team, for example during a new opening.

How do audit results lead to real improvements?

By sending them to two places. The general manager uses them to fix issues on site, while the central team collects them to spot patterns across locations. Friction that shows up in several hotels points to a product or process change, which then goes into the experience roadmap and later into an implementation plan.

Does technology improve service quality in hotels?

It can, but only when it supports the experience. Tools that save costs or streamline work are helpful if they give staff more time for guests. If a tool such as QR ordering reduces the team to dropping off drinks, without time to talk with guests, the quality of the experience goes down instead of up.