Accor has become the first large tourism organisation to gain T-QUAL accreditation and the ability to display the T-QUAL tick, under a pilot scheme conducted by the Tourism Quality Council of Australia.
The pilot marks a significant expansion of the accreditation program, enabling large tourism organisations such as hotel chains, airlines and restaurant franchises to become accredited and display the scheme’s symbol, the T-QUAL tick.
Vice president Accor Australia Simon McGrath stressed the importance of the scheme, which complemented the efforts of organisations such as AAA Tourism to provide “greater confidence” to hotel guests.
“Accreditation is important for the Australian hotel industry because it gives confidence to wholesalers and travel agents selling hotel product domestically and internationally,” he told Travel Today.
“Having a government authority assess and then accredit us is very encouraging because branding is at the core of our business and the accreditation reflects the rigour we invest in continually reviewing and improving our own product.”
The French hotel chain has 160 properties in Australia.
Its qualification to the scheme takes the number of tourism businesses that are T-QUAL accredited to 12,600.
Minister for tourism Martin Ferguson branded the move a “milestone” for quality assurance and invited other large organisations to become accredited.
