What an LQA Assessor Checks in a Guest Room

LQA (Leading Quality Assurance) assesses luxury hotels against its own standards. The full standards are private. LQA gives them to its client hotels. This page uses only what LQA publishes on its own site. It tells you what the assessor looks for in a room, and how to get each room ready.

Two ways LQA counts its standards

According to Leading Quality Assurance (lqagroup.com), an assessment covers more than 1,000 luxury standards. LQA groups these standards in two ways. One group is by department. The other group is by performance criterion.

A department count tells you which team owns the standard. A criterion count tells you what the standard measures. The two lists count different things. Do not add them together.

It is easy to mix up the two numbers. 69 is the maximum for the cleanliness criterion. It is not the housekeeping count. The housekeeping department has 117 standards. When a checklist gives a different number, use LQA's own page.

What the assessor looks for in the room

LQA names four room items in its published criteria. The table shows each item and how to check it before a guest arrives. The first two columns come from LQA. The last column is our guidance for housekeeping. It is not LQA text.

LQA publishes only these examples. The full list of 117 housekeeping standards is private.

The four items have one thing in common. Each one is a condition that the assessor can see. A stain, a dirty remote, a scuff or a smear is a fact in the room, not an opinion. These are also the items that a fast room check can miss.

How the assessor works

LQA publishes these facts about the assessment:

• The assessor is anonymous. LQA says that all assessments are done "under the guise of a regular guest." No staff member knows who the assessor is.
• The stay is 1 to 3 nights. The duration changes with the size of the hotel.
• The report shows each standard. It shows which standards the hotel met, did not meet, or that did not apply. It also shows the top missed standards.
• The report has photos. LQA says that its visual media covers service touchpoints, "from room conditions to presentation standards."
• The assessor gives a debrief. Management gets a debrief from the assessor after the stay.
• LQA recommends 2 or more assessments each year. Between assessments, clients can do self-assessments against the LQA standards.

For the full assessment, see what an LQA audit is. To compare LQA with another firm, see Coyle vs LQA.

Why every room must meet the standard

The assessor books as a regular guest. You do not know which room they will get. You also do not know the date. Thus, the only safe plan is that every room meets the standard every day.

The LQA report shows photos of the room that the assessor got. Your own room checks must find the same problems first. A supervisor can check some rooms each day. A self-assessment can check a sample. But a stain or a scuff in the next room can be in the next report.

How RapidEye helps housekeeping

Your housekeeping team already takes photos or video of each room. RapidEye uses that media. You send us the photos and video. RapidEye's AI platform analyzes them. We return the findings for each room.

RapidEye flags the same types of problems that an assessor can see in a room:

• Stains on furniture, bedding and carpet.
• Missing items, for example a remote, an amenity or a piece of decor that is not in its position.
• Damage, for example scuffs and marks on walls, or broken fixtures.
• Missed cleaning, for example a smear, dust, or an area that the room attendant did not do.

RapidEye looks at every room that your team captures, not a sample. You can then fix a problem before a guest, or an assessor, sees it. To see the full list of items, read what AI can detect in a hotel room.

RapidEye is not part of LQA. We do not have the private LQA standards. This page uses only what LQA publishes.

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