SERENA HOTELS IS ONE OF UGANDA’S SUPERBRANDS
(Posted 27th August 2014)
The Private Sector Foundation, in its annual award ceremony recognizing Uganda’s most visible and widely known brands, has put Serena Hotels in the ranks of a domestic super brand.
The process to get there went through several stages, an onsite audit of the business, a consumer survey and finally voting by text message – something which in the future hopefully spreads to the main social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
According to an official from the PSF (U) is a brand considered a winner if it is committed to the well-being of the Ugandan people through provision of employment, innovation to expand economic and social well-being, contribution to the country’s tax revenue and generally through corporate citizenship.
Both Serena properties in Uganda, the flagship Kampala Serena Hotel, since its relaunch in 2007 considered Kampala’s best hotel, and the lakeside Lake Victoria Serena Resort and Spa in Lweza, off the main highway to Entebbe, were judged in the exercise and excelled.
Notably was Serena’s staff training part of the winning formula after the company last year entered into an agreement with Lobster Ink, a South African based company that specializes in service delivery training in the hospitality industry – benchmarked to Leading Quality Assurance (LQA) Standards. Under this agreement and partnership has Serena in Uganda so far had 415 members of staff and 93 students from select hospitality colleges and hospitality learning institutions successfully graduated from the programme, adding skills and raising service delivery levels.
According to Mr. Anthony Chege, the Kampala Serena Hotel General Manager was ‘the outcome of this program has undoubtedly been commendable improvement in the quality and skills of his members of staff and those of the select students from the various institutions who then go out to help give the best of the Ugandan Tourism Industry’.
The training programme in place across all of East Africa’s Serena properties is co-financed with DEG (the investment arm of the Federal Republic of Germany – Technical Assistance Program) which meets all costs on a 50-50 shared basis with Serena Hotels. For more details about Serena and in particular about the locations of hotels, resorts and safari lodges and camps visit www.serenahotels.com
