LRA Worldwide Partners with Little River Casino Resort on Hotel and Casino Quality Assurance Program

MANISTEE, Michigan/HORSHAM, Pennsylvania; June 27, 2006 – Little River Casino Resort (LRCR), a four-season resort property on the banks of Lake Michigan, has retained LRA Worldwide, Inc., to provide a Quality Assurance program for its hotel and casino. The LRA site visits began in the 2nd Quarter of 2006 to measure performance at all of the crucial facility and service touch points and provide immediate feedback to the property leadership.

LRA Worldwide, based in suburban Philadelphia, is a leading consultant in the area of Customer Experience Management (CEM). LRA’s Quality Assurance & Mystery Shopping practice conducts more than 4,000 hotel, resort, casino, golf, airport, stadium/arena and retail inspections in a given year. LRA’s professional hospitality consultants provide clients with unparalleled insights into operational and service excellence, and a rich database of benchmarked performance data across the hospitality industry allows clients to gauge their execution against the competition.

“Given the depth of their experience and the professional qualifications of their consultants, we felt LRA would provide the most insight and value to our QA program,” explained Bill Gavin, Director of Hotel Operations for LRCR. “Their roster of clients in hospitality and beyond is telling – they help the best operators stay at the top of the heap…and get even better.”

LRA has conducted similar programs with many of the most well-known brands in the lodging and gaming industry, across all service categories. From Holiday Inn Express to the Luxury Collection, LRA’s programs are designed to measure to the exact specifications and needs of the particular brand or property. Within the gaming industry, LRA has worked with divisions of MGM MIRAGE, Penn National Gaming, Churchill Downs Incorporated, and Boyd Gaming; this project with Little River Casino Resort, an enterprise of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, is LRA’s first work with a tribal gaming entity.

“This program is a commitment on the part of Little River to providing its guests with the optimal experience, from the guest room to the blackjack table,” said John Roberto, LRA Worldwide Executive Vice President and Quality Assurance Group leader. “They have invested a great deal in property capital improvements, and the QA program is a like investment into the quality of the guest experience.”

As with many of LRA’s programs, the site visit will serve a dual purpose for the client. One part of the visit will be a pure “mystery shop,” where the consultant poses as a regular resort guest; the second part will be more interactive, with a property walkthrough and a debriefing on the inspection results.

“Again, this is a benefit of the professionalism that LRA brings to what otherwise would be a traditional ‘mystery shop’,” Gavin reiterated. “They aren’t providing us with static reports to sit on a desk or website – they will be actively helping us improve our operation on a continuous basis.

About LRA Worldwide, Inc:
LRA Worldwide, Inc., is a leading consulting, organizational development and research company that specializes in Customer Experience Management (CEM). LRA helps companies and brands design and deliver the optimal customer experience across all key touch points using an integrated suite of services that measure and improve service quality, customer satisfaction, employee performance, loyalty, customer advocacy and profitability. LRA specializes in “operationalizing the brand” – turning brand promise and customer strategy into operational reality. LRA’s tactical CEM practice areas include Customer Experience Strategy Design, Standards Development & Content Management, Organizational Development & Training, Customer and Employee Research and Quality Assurance & Mystery Shopping; these are either deployed together in a strategic manner to continually monitor and improve the customer experience or deployed individually to address a specific client tactical need.

LRA’s clients include some of the world’s leading companies and brands in the hospitality industry and beyond, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Hard Rock, the PGA TOUR, Albertsons Supermarkets, the NBA and MGM MIRAGE. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.LRAworldwide.com.


# # #