Ardilaun Receives Optimus Award
Prestigious Awards for Galway Leading Hotels
The Ardilaun Hotel was one of the four hotels honoured at the Fáilte Ireland Optimus Awards which were held in Galway recently. The Ardilaun Hotel received the Optimus Award for Best Practice for special recognition for their ongoing commitment to continuous improvement and business excellence in the hospitality industry.
John Ryan, Managing Director of The Ardilaun and the Ryan family are delighted to receive this award of Best Practice from Fáilte Ireland for the fourth time. John Ryan adds “I would like to pay compliments and thanks to all of the team here at the Ardilaun. It has been very challenging, beneficial and worthwhile working towards achieving the mark of Best Practice. Teamwork was at the heart of the programme. The assessor was very impressed by the level of commitment and hard work of the team at The Ardilaun. With the hotel’s obvious improvements that we have accomplished in the past 18 months, it is a great testimony to the dedication and support of the staff at the Ardilaun, especially in these challenging times.”
In the past 5 years, The Ardilaun has adopted guidelines and directives from the Optimus Programme, and has undergone an independent audit by the Excellence Ireland Quality Association (EIQA). The resulting feedback affirms positive aspects as well as providing areas for improvement and development. This award further enhances The Ardilaun’s position as a leader in the hospitality Industry.
Tony Lenehan, Head of Food, Hospitality and Standards, Fáilte Ireland stressed the importance of Optimus at the recent awards ceremony, in the current trading conditions. “I would like to commend your willingness to take on Optimus at a challenging time for tourism. This demonstrates your ability to embrace challenges and deal with them proactively. For our part, we in Fáilte Ireland are committed to working with you and others in the industry to overcome the challenges posed by the current economic climate.
Indeed, 2010 will see us enhancing our level of practical business support offered to tourism enterprises”.
These relatively new standards for Irish Hotels draws on the best quality practices in the world. Because the hospitality sector is a worldwide industry, its standards are global ones, with benchmarks being set by the best hotels in the world. As part of the programme, a hotel’s success is determined simply by each guest’s experience during their stay and everything contributes to that – from the first welcome, appearance and impressions, to the quality of products, staff friendliness, value and attention to detail, and Ardilaun have portrayed this in their operation over the years.
Failte Ireland’s Optimus programme, adapts a disciplined management approach to ensuring that the business capability is in place to deliver consistently high customer service standards. Hospitality businesses have to juggle a multitude of “factors” to delight their customers, and because it is such a competitive industry, managers have to ensure that such standards of service can be sustained profitably.
Other Galway Hotels presented at the Optimus Awards ceremony recently were the Galway Bay Hotel, the Connemara Coast Hotel and the Claregalway Hotel. The Optimus programme, developed by Fáilte Ireland, aims to help tourism establishments – including hotels, restaurants and visitor centres – achieve excellence in every aspect of their business by providing a practical approach to improving the quality, value and delight that visitors experience during their stay in Ireland.
