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Wins of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (1992 and 1999), the only hotel company to do it
How The Ritz-Carlton maintains its brand standards
The Ritz-Carlton is the only hotel company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award two times. Most people know the hotel for its service. Fewer people know the system behind it. The company keeps a list of things that can go wrong, gives each one a point value, and adds up the score every single day. Here is how that works, taken straight from the company's own award application.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
- Luxury hotel company, founded 1983
- Now part of Marriott International
- Won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1992 and 1999
The short answer
The Ritz-Carlton keeps its standards high by counting problems, not just talking about good service. The base is a set of rules called the Gold Standards. On top of that sits a simple habit: find problems and write them down. Staff are trained to spot defects, which the company sums up as Mr. BIV (Mistakes, Rework, Breakdowns, Inefficiencies, and Variation). The company also keeps a fixed list of problem types called Service Quality Indicators, and each type is worth a set number of points. Several of them are about the room itself: a room that was not cleaned well, broken equipment, a room that is not ready, or guest property that is missing or damaged. Each day the company adds up the points and shares the score with everyone. Doing this every day, instead of once a year, is what won the company the country's top quality award two times.
12
Problem types it tracks, each one worth a set number of points
20
Basics every employee learns, from cleaning to spotting problems
Daily
How often the average problem score is figured out and shared with staff
The part everyone knows: the Gold Standards
Almost every Ritz-Carlton story starts here. The company's 1999 award application calls the Gold Standards the base of the whole system. They are the five things that tell every employee what the hotel promises a guest.
The Credo
The main belief: "The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission."
The Motto
"We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." It treats staff as professionals, not servants.
Three Steps of Service
A warm hello using the guest's name. Care for what the guest needs. A warm goodbye, again by name.
The 20 Basics
The list of how to act day to day. It covers cleaning, spotting problems, owning guest issues, and taking care of the building.
The Employee Promise
The company's promise back to its staff. It calls them "the most important resource in our service commitment to our guests."
These get repeated a lot. The company says the Gold Standards stay alive through new-hire training, classes, printed Credo cards, and a short meeting held in every work area, on every shift. That meeting is the famous "daily line-up." It is how a rule on a small card is still followed years later.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission.The Ritz-Carlton Credo, as printed in the company's 1999 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Application Summary
The part that wins awards: problems become numbers
Good service alone does not win the Baldrige award two times. What sets the Ritz-Carlton apart is that it turns "give great service" into a number it counts every day. And it starts by giving problems a name.
The 1999 award application lists this as Basic number 8: "Each employee will continuously identify defects (M.R. B.I.V.) throughout the Hotel." Mr. BIV is an easy way to remember the five kinds of problem every employee should notice and report. The point, as Ritz-Carlton expert and author Joseph Michelli explains, is to make it safe to report problems. When no one gets in trouble for flagging a problem, more problems get fixed instead of hidden.
M
Mistakes
R
Rework
B
Breakdowns
I
Inefficiencies
V
Variation
Mr. BIV: the five kinds of problem every Ritz-Carlton employee is trained to spot and report. The M.R. B.I.V. name comes from the company's 1999 award application; the five words come from Joseph Michelli.
The list of problems Ritz-Carlton scores every day
Here is the part most stories leave out. The award application lists the company's Service Quality Indicators: the worst problems that can happen during a normal stay. Each one carries a point value, based on how much it hurts the guest.
The points tell you what matters most. A missing guest preference or a room that is not ready costs a few points. An unsolved guest problem or missing or damaged guest property costs 50. We tagged each problem below by kind, because a lot of this list is not about service at all. It is about the state of the room.
Room-condition problem
Service problem
| Problem type | Kind | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Unsolved guest problem | Service | 50 |
| Missing or damaged guest property (and accidents) | Room | 50 |
| Missed guest preference | Service | 10 |
| Room not ready | Room | 10 |
| Dropped reservation call | Service | 5 |
| Guest had to change rooms | Service | 5 |
| Broken room equipment | Room | 5 |
| Hotel not looking right | Room | 5 |
| Problem at a meeting or event | Service | 5 |
| Bill had to be fixed | Service | 3 |
| Room not cleaned well | Room | 1 |
| Food or drink not good enough | Service | 1 |
The Ritz-Carlton's twelve Service Quality Indicators and their points, taken from the company's 1999 award application (Figure 4.5). We sorted them by points, and we added the "Kind" column ourselves to separate room problems from service problems. Five of the twelve, including the highest-scoring room problem (missing or damaged guest property), are about the state of the room. The wording here is shortened for plain reading; the source uses terms like "Inadequate Guestroom Housekeeping" and "Unready Guestroom."
How the daily score is built
The 1999 award application says it plainly: "the total number of occurrences is multiplied by the weight, totaled and divided by the number of working days applicable to obtain an average daily point value. The average daily point value is disseminated to the workforce daily." In simple words: count each problem, multiply by its points, add it all up, divide by the work days, and you get one daily score. Then you tell every employee that score. Not once a year. Every day.
Source: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, 1999 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Application Summary, Information and Analysis section.Room condition is built into the rules
The problem list is not the only place the room shows up. It is built right into the 20 Basics every employee learns.
Basic No. 11
Keeping things spotless is every employee's job, not just housekeeping's.
Basic No. 19
Safety first. Every employee helps keep the hotel safe and reports any risk.
Basic No. 20
Take care of the building. Keeping the hotel in good shape is every employee's job.
Put together, the message is clear. The Ritz-Carlton does not split "service" from "condition." A clean, working, ready room is part of the promise. A problem with it gets written down with a number, just like a slow check-in. That is how the hotel stays the same all over the world. It does not rely on whether one manager felt like checking a room that morning. It built a system that counts.
What the system fixes, and what it can't
The smart part of the Ritz-Carlton way is that it makes finding problems a daily habit, not a once-a-year event. The catch is the one every hotel shares: a person still has to see a problem to write it down.
A daily meeting and a points list only work as well as the room checks behind them. On a busy day, a housekeeping manager cannot walk every room. So the problems that get logged are the ones someone happened to catch. The "room not cleaned well," "room not ready," and "missing or damaged guest property" lines all depend on a person noticing, in a room that may be one of dozens cleaned that shift. The standard covers every room. The checking rarely does.
Where RapidEye fits
The same problem list, checked on every room
The Ritz-Carlton built, by hand and over many years, a way to catch room problems again and again: damaged property, a room that is not ready, broken equipment, cleaning that fell short. RapidEye is the modern, automatic version of that idea for the room part of the list. It is AI inspection intelligence. It reads the cleaning and turnover photos a team already takes, compares each room to how that room should look, and flags missed cleaning, damage, and missing items, on every room, not just the few a manager has time to walk. A person still makes the final call on each flag. That is the whole point of Mr. BIV: bring the problem into the open so someone can fix it.
The gap is where problems hide. Across more than 1.5 million turnover photos from a 500-plus-unit operator, RapidEye found, on average, four issues per property that the operator's own cleaners and inspectors had already missed, the kind of room problem that never makes the list because no one saw it.
RapidEye was built by two Carnegie Mellon researchers on patented inspection technology, and it works with the photos a housekeeping team already takes. It does not replace the daily meeting or the people behind it. It just makes sure the room part of the list gets checked on every room, every turnover, not only the ones that got a quick look.
See what it can findFrequently asked questions
How does The Ritz-Carlton maintain its brand standards? +
It uses a quality system that won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award two times, in 1992 and 1999, the only hotel company to win it twice. The base is the Gold Standards (Credo, Motto, Three Steps of Service, 20 Basics, Employee Promise). The engine on top is tracking problems: staff are trained to spot defects, summed up as Mr. BIV, and the company scores a set list of problem types called Service Quality Indicators, each worth points. Per its 1999 award application, the company counts the problems, weights them by points, divides by the work days, and shares the average daily score with all staff every day.
What are the Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards? +
They are the base of the company's culture, and there are five parts: the Credo (genuine care and comfort of guests is the highest mission), the Motto ("We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen"), the Three Steps of Service, the 20 Ritz-Carlton Basics, and the Employee Promise. They are kept alive through training, printed Credo cards, and a short daily line-up meeting in every work area on every shift.
What is Mr. BIV at The Ritz-Carlton? +
Mr. BIV is an easy way to remember the kinds of problem every employee should spot and report: Mistakes, Rework, Breakdowns, Inefficiencies, and Variation. The 1999 award application states it as Basic number 8: "Each employee will continuously identify defects (M.R. B.I.V.) throughout the Hotel." The goal is to make it safe to report problems so they get fixed, not hidden.
Does The Ritz-Carlton track room condition defects? +
Yes. The Service Quality Indicators in the 1999 award application include several room problems, each worth points: a room that was not cleaned well, broken room equipment, a room that is not ready, the hotel not looking right, and, worth the most at 50 points, missing or damaged guest property. These are condition and damage problems, the same kind a modern AI inspection system is built to catch on every room, not just a few.
How many times has The Ritz-Carlton won the Baldrige Award? +
Two times, in 1992 and 1999. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is the only hotel company, and one of very few service companies, to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice. The award is run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which publishes the application summaries that lay out the company's quality system.
Sources
- The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. — 1999 Application Summary (Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award), published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Primary source for the Gold Standards and their five parts, the 20 Basics (including Basic 8 on M.R. B.I.V., Basic 11 on cleanliness, Basic 19 on safety, Basic 20 on protecting the building), the Three Steps of Service, the daily line-up, the Service Quality Indicator problem list and points (Figure 4.5), the daily-score formula, the 1992 and 1999 award years, and the company facts. https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2017/10/11/RCHC_Application_Summary.pdf
- NIST Baldrige (Blogrige): "Ritz-Carlton Practices for Building a World-Class Service Culture". Background from the award's administrator on the Gold Standards and daily reinforcement. https://www.nist.gov/blogs/blogrige/ritz-carlton-practices-building-world-class-service-culture
- Joseph Michelli, "Make Customer Breakdowns into Breakthroughs". Author of The New Gold Standard; source for what Mr. BIV stands for (Mistakes, Rework, Breakdowns, Inefficiencies, Variation) and the idea of treating problems as a chance to learn. https://www.josephmichelli.com/blog/make-customer-breakdowns-into-breakthroughs-how-to-embrace-service-shortcomings/
The Ritz-Carlton name and lion-and-crown crest are trademarks of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., shown here to identify the company discussed. RapidEye is an independent company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with The Ritz-Carlton.