Our Week Away at Training

 
Last week, Katrina Smith (Guest Services Manager) and I traveled to a 3-day IHG training class in Virginia Beach. The first day's class was called Promises Kept, the second day was all about Maintaining Quality and the third day's class was on Supervisory Skills.

Promises Kept was all about service recovery, which is an opportunity to correct and build loyalty with guests when something goes wrong during a guest's stay. Maintaining Quality was about making sure the hotel is guest ready every day. This means from the time a person makes a reservation, to their arrival at the hotel, and all the way through the accommodations and facilities at the hotel, ending with their departure from the hotel. And lastly Supervisory Skills was about just that, how to improve one's Supervisory Skills when working with other employees. 

While down at Virginia Beach we also made sure to have some nice leisurely time as well. Although it is March and the weather wasn't perfect, it was a nice change of scenery for the week. Both the Holiday Inn Conference Center where we stayed and the Holiday Inn Oceanfront where the class took place were wonderful properties that had friendly staff and beautiful features unique to each of them. Overall we both took away a lot of good, valuable information from the training class and we hope to implement many new policies and procedures into our own hotel. 


Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

Hooray for New Employees!!

            



The hotel has recently added a fresh new face to our front desk team. Being that we are a small, privately owned hotel, we are only made up of twenty-one hardworking, dedicated employees. Megan Kunkle is our newest addition to the staff at the hotel. She has recently moved to the Warrenton area all the way from Pennsylvania. She has experience in the hotel industry, having already worked in a Hampton Inn when she lived up north. Megan is a very sweet and knowledgeable girl who shows great drive and desire to learn as much as she can about her job. We welcome her graciously to our staff with open arms!


Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

January 2013 Associate of the Month

Amanda Plaugher was the proud recipient of the Associate of the Month Award for January 2013. Amanda started working at the hotel in May 2010 in the housekeeping department. She is a hardworking employee who is always very polite and pleasant to guests and fellow co-workers. Some of her interests outside of work include playing video games and board games, as well as spending time with her husband and the pets they have together. She can also be found at one of  her favorite stores in town, Hobbies Etc. Amanda has a degree in English and aspires to be a successful teacher or writer one day.

Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

CPR Training

When presented with the opportunity to have the entire staff at our hotel trained and certified in CPR for free, we knew that we could not miss this chance. Thanks to the wonderful instructor, Teresa Mason, from Breath of Fresh Air in Mechanicsville, Virginia, we now have 8 of our 22 person staff trained in both adult and infant CPR. The class only took 5 hours from start to finish and was very interactive and fun to be apart of.

CPR is something that every person can benefit from learning. If you are interested in more information on training, please visit the website for Breath of Fresh Air at www.cpr-bofa.com .


Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

Great Hotels Guests Love

Every time a guest stays at the hotel and checks out, they are emailed a survey to fill out about the hotel 72 hours after their departure. These surveys have hundreds of different questions, based on every single aspect of the hotel, from the quality of food on the breakfast bar to the condition of the pillows in the rooms, to the overall experience they had when staying here. At the end of every month these survey scores are averaged out to create a Overall Monthly Report that tells the hotel how they are doing and if there is anything specific they need to work on to improve scores. 

For the month of January 2013, our hotel scored a 93% on the overall monthly report. We are currently ranked number 2 out of 21 hotels in our market. We are also ranked well above average for all IHG hotels in the America's. Striving to keep our guest survey scores above 90 is always a continuous goal that we set for ourselves at the hotel. Hearing guest feedback, both positive and negative, and most importantly improving our weak areas is the name of the game in this industry!

Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

Delicious, Hot, Complimentary Breakfast!!

One of the many great amenities that our hotel provides to guests each and every day is a delicious, hot complimentary breakfast. The amount of choices that are on the breakfast bar line every morning include bacon, sausage, biscuits and sausage gravy, scrambled eggs, yogurt, fruit, muffins, a variety of juice flavors, cereal, bagels, croissants, pancakes and of course the signature Holiday Inn cinnamon buns. 

If this isn’t enough food options for you, well not to fear, we’ve added even more choices starting this year!! Now you can enjoy French toast with delicious maple syrup or choose any one of our Danishes including apple, cherry and cream cheese flavors. There is also a waffle machine that is easily accessible to all guests if you are in the mood to make fresh, made-from-scratch waffles.  

We are continuously trying to add new food choices to the breakfast bar line so that we can provide a variety of options for our guests to enjoy. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so why not enjoy what you're eating, and come stay at the Holiday Inn Express Warrenton!!

Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager

Guest Appreciation

We are in the business to make our guests feel comfortable and relaxed while they are staying with us. One of our main jobs that we try to focus on is how we can add extra perks to give to our guests so that they feel like we appreciate their business.

Beginning in October and continuing through the end of December, we offered complimentary hot apple cider and gingerbread cookies available in the hotel lobby to all guests checking in between the hours of 3pm and 9pm. Starting in January and continuing through the end of March, we have switched from hot apple cider to hot chocolate with marshmallows and shortbread cookies. During spring and summer there will be delicious, refreshing lemonade.

We have also gone the extra step to purchase a popcorn machine so guests can enjoy hot, buttery popcorn as they make their way through our hotel.


We are always looking for new ways that we can make our guests feel happy and welcomed into the beautiful town of Warrenton!


Molly Miller
Sales & Projects Manager