IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
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Most compliance gaps open up between audits
Hotels put a lot of effort into passing inspections and brand audits, but an auditor might only visit every six to eighteen months. Whether standards hold in the days in between depends on one thing: whether frontline teams understand why each standard exists.
When teams only know what to do, shortcuts creep in under pressure, usually with good intentions. A room attendant shaving minutes off a clean, or a cable left trailing across a staircase, can lead to an injured colleague, a guest claim or a negative review. Each of those costs far more than getting it right the first time.
Brett Robbins is joined by Duncan Cameron, founder of HotelAudit, and Marsha Bonner, Executive Vice President of Risk Management at Highgate. Together they cover both sides of the equation: the standards hotels set and audit, and the risk management that keeps guests and teams safe across a large portfolio. They share real examples from the floor and practical ways to make compliance stick.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
- Why great service depends on safety, and how to move ownership of safety from head office to every role in the hotel
- How Highgate keeps safety front of mind across more than 37,000 team members, from five-minute stand-ups to messages on the time clock
- How gamification, including Highgate’s Risk Rumble Challenge, turns self-inspections into something teams compete to do well
- How self-auditing keeps standards consistent between audits, and how to spot when self-audit scores don’t match reality
- Why a fast result deserves a closer look, with real examples of well-meaning shortcuts that put teams and guests at risk
- How to write standards around the guest experience, so teams understand the reason behind each one and deliver it as normal behaviour
Speakers.
Duncan Cameron
Founder at HotelAudit
Duncan has more than 25 years’ experience across over 2,000 hospitality sites, spanning luxury resorts, independent hotels, contract catering and wellness-led properties. He founded HotelAudit, which develops operational and service standards and audits them for owners, operators, management companies and brands worldwide, from the value end of the market to luxury. He also runs the advisory practice Wynter Hospitality. His earlier senior operational roles include Chief Operating Officer at Rose Hospitality and Regional Head of Operations at Macdonald Hotels & Resorts. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality and of HOSPA.
In this session, Duncan brings the auditor’s view from inside the property. He explains why his team coaches while they audit, how self-auditing keeps standards consistent between visits, and what he sees on the ground when a standard has been written without the guest in mind.
Marsha Bonner
Executive Vice President of Risk Management at Highgate
Marsha has spent more than 25 years leading risk management in hospitality, covering enterprise risk, claims, insurance, loss prevention, compliance and crisis response. Before joining Highgate in 2025, she spent 15 years as Chief Risk and Benefits Officer at FelCor Lodging Trust and earlier served as Director of Risk Management at Wyndham International. She has also advised clients as a Senior Vice President at Marsh and at Alliant Insurance Services. At Highgate, she works with more than 37,000 team members on delivering a great guest experience safely.
In this session, Marsha shares how Highgate moves responsibility for safety from the corporate office to every position in the hotel. She explains how daily repetition and the Risk Rumble Challenge keep teams engaged, and what it costs when the reason behind a standard gets lost.
Brett Robbins
CEO at Snapfix
Brett Robbins has spent the last coupe of years working closely with hotel operators to understand where things break down in day-to-day operations, and what it actually takes to fix them. As CEO of Snapfix, he's seen firsthand how the gap between a guest expectation and a team's ability to deliver it is almost always an operational problem.
Brett will share what he's learned from hotels that are getting this right, and where most properties still have room to close the loop.
Snapfix is just stupid simple. Red, yellow, green and that's it. Everybody's got a driver's license, so everybody already knows what that means. It's a big part of why adoption across every department has been so fast; and with the photos, the system doesn't care what language your team speaks, and that’s so important in hospitality.
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"It didn't take more than half a day to configure Snapfix to our liking. The team was quick to help, but honestly, we could have done it ourselves. It was that easy."