[1] Quality Management in the Leisure Lodge Resort, Mombas (for German Version click here)
The international quality management system (QMS) ISO 9001 influences slowly but steadily the hotel sector. This of course has economic reasons. Most hotel managers or owners think that the hotel is managed so perfect that a Management System is already existing and therefore an external quality check is not necessary. On the other hand – if a hotel in Europe needs money - managers are afraid of failing because the ranking of a hotel (Basel II) includes a ranking of the quality of the management. But even if money is not the only reason, Quality Management (QM) is a chance to lowers operating costs, the complaint quota is normally reduced and it has an effect on motivating the staff just to mention some effects.
To correspond to the needs of environment sensitive guests, hotels start to ask for ISO 14001 (international environmental management system).
In Germany not too many hotels got a certificate according to the new standard ISO 9001:2008. This number is significantly low compared with the number of medium-sized enterprises which have noticed that a QMS means not only work for the quality manager and the employees, because they have to analyse their work processes, but also offers advantages i. e. in customer and employee satisfaction.
A certification according to this international standard is considerably further commonly in Asian countries, though. The well known Leisure Lodge Resort has made ([2] www.leisurelodgeresort.com) the step towards the quality management in Kenya now. This did not happen because the management wanted to have a certificate but because the manager John Mutua is convinced that a good QMS is an prerequisite and an exclusive feature in customer satisfaction. For him it is the basis to survive in a permanently stronger competition in tourism.
Not only the products are analysed for the ISO 9001:2008 quality management but it is mostly about an optimal organisation of the processes, the job sequences to satisfy the customers needs for now and also for the future.
Training of some months was necessary for this task, (although in opinion of the employees everything runs actually very well). Volker Hasse has prepared the training and the analysis of the hotel. He is an expert from Berlin and Tonio Knies assisted him. The result is an impressive quality manual. This was the result of the audit Professor Dr. Klaus Jamin from the certification Institute IQM ([3] www.qm-germany.de), presented in his speech in the presence of more than 100 guests and employees of the hotel. It took him nearly one week to analyse all the departments of the launch and to talk to at least 70 people in the complex. The decision makers were questioned in interviews. Visits for example were made in all departments specially in the kitchen, in the services sector, and also in the security department (60 employees).
[4]
Klaus Jamin und GM John Mutua
Over 140 suggestions for improvement which are tackled within the next couple of months, came from the employees.

From now on the Leisure Lodge will carry out a regular internal audit at least once a year and every three years it will be checked by an external Auditor again.