Market Know-how: Mattress and Pillow Rules

Russian hotel chains are trying not to fall behind their western competitors, and continue to try to expand on the Russian market. Therefore local operators try to adopt the main principles of work of international chains, including single standards. For each chain, all mattresses, pillows, furniture and even towels in each room should be identical.

However experts still don’t assess their efforts highly: often everything is reduced to copying western requirements. "Recently in the Moscow hotel real estate market, as a result of international hotel operators entering the market, quality development has been observed, standards have started to operate in defining the quality of given services all over the world, including the quality of both mattresses and pillows, and the furnishings of the premises," says managing director of Praedium Oncor International Ruben Alchudzhyan.

Area of expertise

According to general director of Gost Hotel Management Sergey Kolesnikov, it is possible to subdivide the range of quality standards into two categories: standards relating to equipment and facilities and standards of service that define the quality of service that is received as a result by the visitor. "Everything that is done at the stage of construction of a hotel complex concerns the first category. Standards of service are realized by the employees of a hotel," Kolesnikov says. According to him, almost the whole premises of the hotel, including the design, lighting in rooms and public zones, lift requirements, etc, should correspond to these standards. "This is a huge list of rules, which specifies how it is necessary to construct a building and what to buy next. In particular, with mattresses, there is the question not only about the springs but how hard it should be. Some chains offer different variants: for example, at Holiday Inn there is a special menu of pillows. A guest can choose from five kinds: small, large, hard, etc.," describes Kolesnikov. Also, the expert says, each chain has its own standard of linen. "Hotel chains create quality standards and observe them: to register and introduce them is one thing, but to follow them is another," he adds.

Deputy director of development at CB Richard Ellis Stanislav Ivashkevich, in turn, divides standards into operational and technical. "Operational includes such things as the checking in and out of guests, the cleaning of rooms or the laying of breakfast. Operational standards are a list of rules and procedures which are created, as a rule, for a specific hotel in view of global policy, and also local legislation. For example, in the US an employee at the reception of a hotel can take money from a guests credit card and give them cash while in Russia this is a banking operation," he explains.

According to him, almost all elements of a hotel have technical standards. "Everything, from the color of the sockets in the room to the finishing of ventilation pipes in the laundry has its own standards. In rare exceptions chains are very concerned about mattresses and pillows – this is done mainly by Hilton. Each brand belonging to Hilton corporation has a Sleep System. If a hotel initially planned to open under the DoubleTree by Hilton brand suddenly had to open under the Hilton Garden Inn brand, all the mattresses bought (800 euros each) would need to be changed, and the owner would have to get rid of the unused mattresses," says Ivashkevich. According to the expert, "the Hilton has requirements that can increase the cost of a project by up to 20%." But the majority of chains want to develop and give discounts which, certainly, should not influence the quality of the given services, he considers. Moreover, the standards of hotels, aspiring to keep up to date, constantly undergo changes and additions, as the inquiries of visitors vary, says general director of Azimut Hotels Company Alexander Gendelsman. "Yesterday access to the Internet was a luxury, now it is a requirement for all business-class hotels rendering services for business tourists," he says. According to him, the Russian hospitality market is still rathr young, and therefore the standards operating in the majority of Russian hotels are far from perfect. "Nevertheless hotel chains try to maintain their reputation, whether they be a 3- or 5-star hotel, says Gendelsman.

Every operator develops a list of rules for its own chain. It may be uniform standards for the brand all over the world or standards that vary depending on the location of the hotel, the expert specifies. "All international hotel operators have precisely registered standards not only in terms of quality of service, but also in the fitting and decoration, etc, of the hotels," says David Jenkins, director of DTZ Hospitality Russia, who previously headed the regional department of purchases of hotels at Marriott in Moscow. According to him, each chain has a so-called Purchasing Manual, which is created for each brand of a hotel chain where recommendations by category of goods are precisely registered, and where also recommended suppliers can be found. "The observance of standards is checked annually by a special commission," the expert says. Representatives of international operators check the regional representatives and franchises. According to Gendelsman, the standards of Azimuth Hotels are registered in four books. "Our standards operate in all our hotels, therefore the visitor can be assured that it will receive equally high service both in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok and in Munich," he says.

Technologies of choice

Each chain has its own system of selecting suppliers. "When choosing bed linen we select 5-10 firms from samples given to us. After that we give their products to neutral experts, for example, a laundry. After washing we assess the linen, we check for any defects, whether it is still the same size, whether the color has changed. That is to say we hold a tender not only on price but also on quality," says Kolesnikov. However, according to Ivashkevich, "tenders are directed more at stimulating companies to reduce their prices."

"It would be very silly to let a company decorate or equip a hotel that has never done it before. But unfortunately this still happens for obvious reasons, but this is only realized at the stage of installing the equipment or its subsequent operation," Ivashkevich says about the tender system of selecting suppliers. "As a rule, hotels work with local suppliers. If the necessary goods are not present in the local market they are imported. A tender is usually carried out until the signing of a contract with this or that supplier,” says Jenkins.

According to member of the board of directors at Rudec group Sergei Dorkin, once a contractor has been selected by tender, as a rule, the cooperate on a constant basis. "In the 3-stars segment (hotels with which we operate) the contractors are mainly Russian," notes Dorkin. "At the end of each calendar year we hold tenders on the delivery of goods to hotels belonging to the Azimuth chain. Announcements of such tenders are placed on the website of the company, and invitations to participate are also sent to the most well-known companies in each branch. As a rule, the tender id carried out in two stages. At the first stage 2-3 companies that have offered the most interesting conditions of cooperation are defined. These companies move to the second stage," says Gendelsman.

According to him, participants of the tender provide a package of constituent documents for consideration and final offers are made by competitive selection. The commission considers the offers and chooses a supplier for the given commodity group for the following calendar year. With this supplier a cooperation agreement in which the main principles of relations are is signed: prices, delivery terms, conditions of payment, etc. Among such partners of the Azimuth chain the expert names Felixes, Coca-cola, Groe, Smart-Company, Lavernu, Noginsky chair factory, Kompleks Bar, Torgoviy Design, Fort, Amado, etc.

Big difference

Although Russian hoteliers use western standards of work, the results are not always the same. "Standards of hospitality, standards of equipment don’t especially differ and cannot differ. We lag behind western countries in terms of execution and control," says Kolesnikov. However, according to him, the introduction of standards in Russia happens more quickly than in the West. "Russian operating companies are more economical, are more zealous and achieve good results with smaller financial expenses," he considers.

"In Russia the understanding of quality standards like, for example, the class of a premises are blurred. In the West the parameters have been fixed for a long time and are common for all of us, but in Russia everything is dictated by the one dictating," Dorkin says. "The main difference between Russian and European standards, is sadly in their quality," summarizes Gendelsman.

"Standards that were copied from western standards very rarely correspond to the structure and conception of a hotel if they were not developed for the hotel in question," says Gendelsman. However, according to him, this problem of Russian operators is connected exclusively with a shortage of skilled experts in the sphere of hospitality. "The Azimuth chain of hotels has its own corporate university in which all employees of the company are trained by specialty. Subsequently these experts observe the standards of service for visitors and render services at a European level," he says.

In Ivashkevich's opinion, only a few Russian hotel operators have different goals to western ones: "Sometimes it is someone's ambitions, or just a big company decides to create non-profile assets." In particular, according to the expert, in Russia there is no chain with precise segmentation, with brands and standards corresponding to the whole brand. "The rare exception is represented by a few professional Russian companies operating under a western franchise," the expert considers.