How to create a hotel quality manual

The quality manual of a hotel is a kind of essential guide in which it is clearly stipulated which steps are carried out in the different tasks that are performed.

What is a hotel quality manual?

When we talk about a quality manual, we are referring to a document that records how the quality management system works within a company. This record is made with the purpose of guaranteeing that the company complies with the quality requirements when producing its products. In your hotel quality manual you will explain the process, policies, scopes and measures that are established in your company to effectively carry out the management system and achieve the business goals set.

The guidelines stipulated by the ISO 9001 Standard are followed. The length of the manual will depend on the size and complexity of your hotel. In addition, the quality manual should be accessible to anyone, such as employees, customers, suppliers, auditors and others, who wish to know what the company’s quality standards are. Therefore, in certain contexts, this document can even be part of your branding.

Advantages of a hotel quality manual

Since 2015, the ISO 9001 Standard stipulated that it is not mandatory to use a quality manual in companies. However, for every hotel business, it is very convenient to have it, because of the multiple advantages it offers. Among them are:

• It allows employees and other people involved in the development of the hotel’s common activities to know and comply with legal requirements.
• It facilitates the knowledge of all the internal processes of the business, which makes the work more valuable.
• The exact definition of quality procedures makes service delivery uniform and highly satisfactory.
• It allows greater control over all processes, so you can immediately recognize any possible failures that may arise.
• The quality manual establishes the guidelines to be followed in terms of efficiency and performance, which influences the optimization of results.
• It allows the hotel company to identify the quality levels it possesses and lay the foundation for continuous quality improvements for its establishment.
• Increasing quality standards will also increase customer satisfaction and reduce compensation costs for poor service.

In short, the use of a quality manual increases confidence in the service provided by your hotel.

Objectives pursued by a hotel’s quality manual

A hotel quality manual serves many beneficial purposes for any business. These include the following:

• To specifically describe the operation of the hotel’s management systems.
• Toguide staff in complying with the quality management system processes.
• Facilitating the review and analysis of the procedures developed.
• Monitor the planned growth of the quality management systems.
• Provide company information, so that employees can consult it to clarify doubts that limit their efficiency.
• Minimize organizational communication problems, which contributes to a better flow of tasks and therefore, an increase in profitability.
• Provides new employees with a vision of the company’s quality goals, which gives them more confidence to perform their activities for the first time.
• It facilitates the processes at the time of an audit, since all processes and operations are previously established.

how is the quality manual structured?

If you have already decided to create a quality manual for a hotel, keep in mind that it should include the following elements:

Find out much more about other related terms in our Dictionary of Hospitality and Catering.

Frequently Asked Questions