Wilderness Motorhomes has received a Gold Sustainable Tourism Business Award and a Qualmark Endorsement.
The sister company to SmartRV runs a fleet of premium European rental motorhomes, operating out of the same premises as SmartRV in Auckland and Christchurch. Wilderness received the awards under new guidelines established by Qualmark, New Zealand tourism’s official quality assurance organisation, last October.
The changes came about after Tourism New Zealand took full ownership of the Qualmark brand, establishing a ‘more rounded’ view of what quality means, and extending the Enviro awards programme to include more frequent contact with businesses. All assessments will now include aspects of environmental performance.
“There will be a greater emphasis on customer service and customer satisfaction. What the customer is actually saying about the experience or product will be included in the assessment”, explained Peter Clinton-Baker, Qualmark Tourism Business Advisor.
With new legislation in place, health and safety also plays a more important part in the new criteria.
Mr Clinton-Baker said that in applying the new criteria, assessors are looking for good processes that result in good products that lead to good visitor experiences.
Congratulating the Wilderness team on their win, Mr Clinton-Baker acknowledged that the company had continually scored highly in previous evaluations. The Wilderness Qualmark scorecard included words like ‘excellent’, ‘very good’ and ‘best practice’.
“This time you have raised the bar again and demonstrated clearly that Wilderness Motorhomes is continually looking at ways to improve the customer experience across all aspects of the business.”
“We are very proud to receive these endorsements”, said Mary Hamilton, Marketing Director of Wilderness Motorhomes and SmartRV. “We understand that only 10 percent of businesses have achieved this status under the new rating system. It’s an illustration of our commitment to the environment and our focus on continually surprising and delighting our guests with outstanding customer service.”
Wilderness Motorhomes and SmartRV have a number of environmental initiatives in place including a company commitment to be paperless in the near future, an environmental committee, community programmes and team tree planting days, an LED light replacement programme for its Auckland and Christchurch bases and a recycling programme for tyres and engine oil.
Read on here for more information about Wilderness Motorhomes and their Environmental Care Code.
