Bespoke hotel accreditation program by ACTE for business travellers

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives introduced the Business and Conference Hotel Accreditation program to guide corporate travel buyers in selecting business-quality accommodations for their travellers.

Under this program, hotels will be inspected against 350-plus criteria in such categories as safety and security and conduciveness to productivity. An ACTE-BCHA affiliated partner will inspect properties onsite every two years. Affiliated partners are selected based on referrals, their reach in the area and the resources they have to conduct inspections, according to ACTE executive director Greeley Koch. ACTE-BCHA COO Winfried Barczaitis will train prospective inspectors.

Following the evaluations, the inspectors will need to submit the findings to ACTE-BCHA. Between inspections, undercover, independent monitors will verify whether hotels are complying with the accreditation. It will be left to ACTE-BCHA’s discretion to find the frequency of the monitoring.

Koch said that the hotels will need to pay membership fees to ACTE-BCHA. Half will be due at the time of inspection, regardless of whether the property passes the inspection, and a hotel will pay the balance after if the property is accredited. The revenue will be shared by ACTE-BCHA and the inspection partners.

Presently, ACTE-BCHA focuses on independently owned and operated hotels in emerging markets. In the program, it aims to inspect more than 10,000 hotels by 2020. One of the first inspection partners is Dnata, a travel industry conglomerate based in Dubai which is well known for providing travel management, air transportation and catering services. ACTE-BCHA will announce its next partners, in India and South Africa, soon.

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