01 Sep Business as (un)usual as ISAAP joins GSA
Today is the day International Serviced Accommodation Accreditation Process (ISAAP) officially joins the Global Secure Accreditation (GSA) family, uniting serviced apartment and hotel accreditation in a one stop shop for the first time.
In a world that still feels a long way from normal, the phrase ‘business as usual’ seems to have lost its meaning, but we can reassure all existing accreditation holders, and new applicants, that nothing will be changing in the short term. We will continue to promote the ISAAP schemes and accreditation holders as we do today, and build on the trust and reassurance that we know our accreditations bring.
In our planning for the future we are focused on the needs of travellers and organisations with travelling workforces, and how we can benefit them in harmonizing accreditations for different types of accommodation. Where many corporate travel programmes contain a blend of both serviced accommodation and hotels, systems that span the two will help them to feel reassured wherever their employees are staying, and to create parity across their programmes.
With the launch of the ISO 31030 Travel Risk Management standard due to come later this month, we know that corporate travel managers are more focused than ever before on duty of care. Where today duty of care related to travel is open to interpretation, the ISO will bring much needed clarity. The ISO itself is expected to state that for accommodation to be defined as ‘preferred’ in a travel programme then it should hold independent security accreditation, so clearly accommodation providers who move quickly to attain this will have a competitive advantage when it comes to RFPs that contain security criteria.
To date ISAAP and GSA have accredited accommodation in more than 23 countries and we are looking at how we can improve processes and global reach through greater use of technology, investing in new systems to make the virtual process of accreditation smoother for both properties and assessors.
We are excited about our joint future and welcome any views or ideas as we move forward.
