Leisure Connection’s Stoke Mandeville Stadium achieves international award

The Leisure Connection managed Stoke Mandeville Stadium and Olympic Lodge Hotel at Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, has become the first hotel and leisure complex to gain Hospitality Assured – the prestigious internationally recognised industry-specific standard for delivering service and business excellence in the hospitality industry.

The Stoke Mandeville Stadium and the 50-bedroom Olympic Lodge Hotel is managed by Leisure Connection Ltd on behalf of WheelPower - British Wheelchair Sport, the national charity which helps people involved in wheelchair sport and many others with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams.

Graham Farrant, chief executive of Leisure Connection said: “This is a fantastic achievement and it’s great to see Leisure Connection setting the precedent. The team have worked extremely hard over the past 12 months and gaining the Hospitality Assured demonstrates the team’s efforts.

Lynne Brittan the Contract Manager at Stoke Mandeville Stadium added: “Hospitality Assured also dovetails extremely well with Quest (the UK Quality Scheme for Sport and Leisure) – for which we retained our ‘highly commended’ status in our recent assessment. The Hospitality Assured assessment covered accommodation, catering and conferencing, whilst Quest covered sport and leisure. We are always keen to achieve the quality awards as they are a great way to highlight to the customer and client an assurance of the quality.

The Hospitality Assured accreditation was undertaken by a team of independent UKAS (The United Kingdom Accreditation Service) assessors from MQA Ltd. on behalf of the Institute of Hospitality, which is the professional body for hospitality industry managers worldwide. It covered all aspects of the Olympic Lodge Hotel – including a dormitory area with a capacity for 350 spaces; catering, via Café Connect, and vending services provided in the Stadium; catering, vending and bar services provided in the Bowls Centre; and conferences and events run anywhere on the site.