Marina Del Rey Marriott

The Challenge - The Marina del Rey Marriott arrival score ranked 43rd out of 46 hotels at the end of 2008.  Local management was not pleased with this mediocre result and they approached us with a challenge to help them improve their ranking.

Our Solution - After a series of meetings with the “front” of the property staff including doormen, valets and bellmen, we devised and implemented new guest hand-off procedures to ensure comprehensive and consistent coverage at the “front” of the property.

The Results - As a result of our program, the Marina del Rey Marriott is currently ranked 8th out of 46 hotels on the arrival score metric.  Plus, the staff is doing a better job of working together and they feel more empowered based on increased feedback from guests and management.

Here is what Doug Smith, Assistant General Manager at the Marina del Rey Marriott, has to say about the drastic improvement:

“The Minuteman Parking team has done a fantastic job focusing on the customer, and dramatically improving our customer satisfaction scores. They have created an arrival experience that exceeds our customer’s expectations.”

Specifically, the Minuteman solution included:

• Upfront meetings - The upfront meetings were moderated by the local Minuteman Parking onsite team and were essential to identifying the root causes of the low arrival score.
• Daily training huddles - The training huddles were used to get the team together to discuss the service initiative for the day.  While these meetings did not take very much time, they serve to set the tone for each day and get the team focused on delivering superior service.
• Toys for kids - During the Summer months when many people are traveling with children, we started handing out small toys to customers with children.   The toys included “Bob the Bear” for children which is a Marina del Rey teddy bear and an arrival gift bag for families which included a Marina del Rey Marriott beach bag with a bucket, shovel and sun screen.  These simple gestures went a long way towards making customers feel good about choosing Marriott as their hotel option, and eased the challenges of families traveling with children.
• Shortened valet shifts - The shortened valet shifts provide Marriott with more available attendants during peak times which serves to minimize wait times for customers arriving and departing the property.  We are providing the same amount of labor, but with more resources for certain peak time periods.
• Tracking - To measure the effectiveness of our training, we started tracking how many different attendants in the front used each customer’s name.
• Vision - Now the entire staff has the same vision how superior customer service should be delivered for the Marina del Rey Marriott, and they are working together to achieve that goal.

Minuteman Parking's Newest Customer

The mission statement for St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton states:

To extend the healing ministry of Jesus in the tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange by continually improving the health and quality of life of the people in the communities we serve

Starting today, Minuteman Parking will be helping St. Jude reach their mission by providing a shuttle operation to deliver employees and patients to their destinations more efficiently and safely, and by providing Lane Ambassadors who will help introduce their new pay-in-lane parking equipment.

St. Jude joins the growing trend of medical facilities that are using parking and valet solutions to improve both patient and visitor satisfaction along with improving “patient flow”.  These services also have an added side benefit of improving safety for all patients, visitors and employees.

St. Jude Medical Center is the latest member in the family of medical facilities served by Minuteman Parking.  We also added Little Company of Mary Medical Center in June and Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) in April.  In addition,  we also provide parking services at Hoag Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital of Orange and Newport Lido Medical Center in Orange County, the Loma Linda Medical Center in Loma Linda and St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino.

Our Newest Customer - Little Company of Mary

I am pleased to announce that we will start providing parking services at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Facility in Torrance on June 29th.

Little Company of Mary Medical Facility is part of the Providence Health and Services system, and they have more than 4000 employees, physicians and volunteers who have been serving our South Bay community for over 40 years.

Minuteman Parking is excited to bring a new look-and-feel to patient and visitor arrival at Little Company of Mary and will be implementing changes in the parking area to improve patient flow and overall satisfaction.  We will staff two valet stations - at the main entrance and at the outpatient services entrance - from Monday through Friday.  In addition, we will provide an on-campus golf cart shuttle during peak times and upon request.  Our contract with Little Company will also add about 15 new associates to the Minuteman Parking family.

Craig Owens, Ron Machon and Dawn Harper are leading the implementation team and our South Bay management team will oversee day-to-day management of the operations.

Little Company of Mary is the latest addition to the family of medical facilities served by Minuteman Parking.   In addition to Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) which we added in April, we also provide parking services at Hoag Hospital, St. Josephs and Newport Lido Medical Center in Orange County, the Loma Linda Medical Center in Loma Linda and St. Bernadine Medical Center in San Bernadino.

CHOC

Minuteman Parking just added CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County) as our newest customer in our growing medical facilities area.  CHOC is the first hospital devoted exclusively to caring for children in Orange County.  Since opening its doors in 1964, CHOC has led the way in many areas of pediatric health care.

We will be providing services for all of CHOC’s parking and shuttle operations in the City of Orange.   CHOC is embarking on a construction project to build a new state-of-the-art patient care tower scheduled to open in 2013, and we will be shuttling all employees and visitors during construction with up to six shuttle buses.  We will also manage their 5-story, 526 space self-parking garage and will provide Ambassadors for the front entrance and visitor valet parking in the garage.

As with our other medical facility customers, we are improving patient flow and serving as an extension of these facilities’ already outstanding patient care.  In addition, our Ambassador program continues to dramatically improve patient satisfaction scores at our partner hospitals.   Minuteman Parking also provides parking services to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, St. Joseph Health System in Orange, Loma Linda Medical Center, Catholic Healthcare West and Newport Lido Medical Center.

Signing up CHOC as a new customer was a team effort for Minuteman Parking, and they were impressed with our medical facilities experience and our approach to customer service.  The bid team included VP of Operations Craig Owens, Controller Wilson Tang, and CFO Consultant Mike Gleason.  We are looking forward to implementing our stellar customer service and parking operations services at CHOC starting at the end of April.

New Minuteman Parking Shuttle Bus for CHOC

In the October newsletter for St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino, Minuteman Parking is highlighted as having a positive impact on patient satisfaction.

Here is what Kimberlee Prokopij, patient satisfaction coordinator, said about Minuteman Parking’s valet parking service:

“By the amount and tone of patient feedback we’ve received so far, the free valet parking seems to be having a very positive impact.”

The hospital began offering free valet parking service though Minuteman Parking in June, and more than 90 visitors use the service each day.  The free valet parking proves how important it is to provide patients and visitors with a great first impression even before they enter the building.

Minuteman Parking at St. Bernardine

St. Bernardine is a 463-bed non-profit acute care hospital that is part of the Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) system.