Guest Experience & Quality Control Manager in City of London

Guest Experience & Quality Control Manager

Company: Criterion Hospitality

Location: London hotel portfolio

Reports to: Head of Operations

Department: Operations

Purpose of the Role

The Guest Experience & Quality Control Manager is responsible for owning the complete guest experience and quality journey across the hotel portfolio.

This role combines proactive guest engagement, service recovery, online reputation management, quality inspections, coaching and continuous improvement to raise guest satisfaction and operational standards.

Key Responsibilities

Guest Experience and Service Recovery

• Maintain a visible and proactive presence at key guest touchpoints, including peak check-in and check-out periods.
• Identify guest dissatisfaction early and coordinate effective service recovery before departure wherever possible.
• Personally manage complex or escalated complaints, ensuring clear communication, ownership and timely resolution.
• Build appropriate relationships with VIP, repeat and long-stay guests and respond proactively to their needs.
• Follow up significant service recovery cases and capture learning to prevent repeat issues.

Online Reputation and Voice of the Guest

• Own GuestTouch, Voice of the Guest reporting and the review management process across the portfolio.
• Monitor reviews across Google, Booking.com, Tripadvisor and other relevant platforms and coordinate appropriate responses.
• Identify complaint and praise themes and translate guest feedback into clear operational actions.
• Encourage authentic guest feedback in line with company procedures and platform requirements.

Quality Assurance and Inspections

• Conduct planned inspections of bedrooms, bathrooms, capsules, public areas and other guest-facing spaces.
• Audit cleanliness, presentation, maintenance conditions and compliance with company and brand standards.
• Complete housekeeping, maintenance, mystery guest and thematic audits as required.
• Record findings consistently and objectively, with clear evidence and named actions.
• Verify that corrective actions have been completed and are effective before closing them.

Continuous Improvement and Team Development

• Identify recurring guest, cleanliness, product and maintenance issues and complete structured root-cause analysis.
• Create improvement plans with named owners, deadlines and clear measures of success.
• Chair the weekly Guest Experience & Quality meeting and track actions through to completion.
• Coach Front Office, Housekeeping and Maintenance teams on guest engagement, service recovery and quality standards.
• Share best practice and recognise hotels and colleagues delivering strong improvement or guest feedback.

Reporting and Accountability

• Provide a weekly dashboard to the Head of Operations covering: overall review score; review trend; top five complaint themes; top five praise themes; room inspection score; bathroom inspection score; housekeeping pass rate; and maintenance completion rate.
• The dashboard must also report: open guest issues; action-plan completion; Hotel of the Month; and Most Improved Hotel.
• Spend approximately 75% of working time in hotels completing inspections and 25% on reporting, administration and team training.

Communication and Standards

• Communicate findings and required actions clearly to hotel managers and relevant department leaders.
• Demonstrate professional behaviours through communication, presentation, accountability and guest service.
• Follow company policies and procedures, including data protection, guest confidentiality, health and safety and operational standards.
• Ensure all mandatory and role-specific training is completed within the required timescales.

Performance & Objectives

• You will be assigned objectives, targets, and/or key performance indicators (KPIs) by your line manager. These will be reasonable, relevant to your role, and aligned with business needs. Performance against these objectives may be reviewed as part of regular supervision, appraisal, or performance management processes.

Skills, Experience and Attributes

• Strong experience in hotel guest experience, quality assurance, operations or continuous improvement.
• Emotionally intelligent.
• Confident but approachable when dealing with guests and colleagues.
• Naturally observant, with excellent attention to detail and high standards.
• Commercially minded.
• Highly organised and positive in approach.
• Able to analyse guest feedback, review data and audit findings and turn them into practical actions.
• Confident coaching teams and constructively challenging managers when standards are not met.
• Able to manage priorities across multiple hotels and follow actions through to completion.