National Sport Centres celebrate hospitality hat-trick

Leisure Connection and its clients are celebrating a hat trick by achieving the Hospitality Assured standard at the National Sports Centres it manages on behalf of Sport England and at Stoke Mandeville Stadium, which it manages on behalf of the British Wheelchair Sport – WheelPower. This success has been achieved through a partnership approach and a lot of hard work and dedication by both the client teams and that of the facility management team

Hospitality Assured is the definitive standard for service and business excellence in hospitality, championed by the Institute of Hospitality and the only standard that focuses exclusively on the customer experience.
Lilleshall National Sports Centre, in Shropshire achieved an overall score of 72.7% which is an outstanding result for the first time and is one of the highest scores achieved by similar organisations, with the average score being 65%. This highlights the hard work that has been put in by Leisure Connection and Sport England at this centre.

Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre achieved an overall and first time score of 70.2% and Stoke Mandeville Stadium retained the Hospitality Assured Accreditation with an improved 68.6% score.

The Hospitality Assured criteria measures the different areas of business paying particular attention to methods of obtaining customer feedback, the response and review to this feedback, and the operational procedures in place to ensure a persons visit or stay over is fully satisfactory.

The assessments are completed over a 2 day period by a fully trained assessor who provides a full review against the criteria.

Blair MacGillivray, Leisure Connection’s Regional Manager for the National Sports Centres said: “We are absolutely delighted to achieve Hospitality Assured accreditation. This prestigious award demonstrates our continued commitment to improvement and to provide the highest quality sports, facilities and services. Our aim at the National Sports Centres is to provide a world leading environment in which to train and compete in sport. Given the challenging nature of the Hospitality Assured standard, this says much about the culture of customer service which is embedded throughout the whole team.”

“The most rewarding part, as manager, is having the commitment of the staff. Without their support we would not have achieved this level. It is a reflection on the enthusiasm, commitment, extraordinary hard work and professionalism of the staff that they have achieved such a wonderful rating. More importantly, it assures our customers that we provide services and facilities that are nationally accredited and at a very high level. I would like to thank all the staff at the centre who continue to do such an outstanding job each day”

“Hospitality assured is all about quality and striving to be the most excellent and this latest success demonstrates that Leisure Connection in partnership with Sport England and WheelPower is always working towards further improving the service we offer, always aiming to exceed customer expectations and continuing to be the best!.”

Philippe Rossiter FIH, Chief Executive of Institute of Hospitality said: "There is little doubting the exceptional feat of both Bisham Abbey and Lilleshall in achieving such high scores in their first Hospitality Assured assessment. Taking the lead from their colleagues at Stoke Mandeville, the teams in both centres have worked very hard to secure this excellent recognition of their commitment to high standards of customer service. This approach is exactly in line with the ethos of all these establishments managed by Leisure Connection, where outstanding sporting performance is being nurtured and developed. The Hospitality Assured standard provides a rigorous evaluation of an organisation's approach to reaching business excellence, and the Leisure Connection teams which have so successfully applied its principles can be justifiably proud of the results."

All national sports centres, which are managed by Leisure Connection are residential.