What is Compliance?
At its core, compliance involves following rules, laws or industry specific regulations, and is essential to ensuring the legal and ethical operation of businesses. But compliance is so much more than just checking things off in the corporate rulebook, it constitutes the fundamental framework of a successful business. In the hustle of today’s marketplace, businesses and service providers are expected to uphold standards when it comes to quality and reliability; for this, compliance holds the key.
The door to a world of benefits can be opened from operating as a compliant business. But with so many, it can be difficult wrap your head around exactly what there is to gain from measuring and monitoring compliance. To remedy this, we’ve categorised some of the key benefits into what we call the 5 Cs of compliance benefits:
From proven compliance with the best practice and latest legislation, customers can be certain that a business’ products and services are safe, secure, and reliable.
Compliance accreditation not only assures clients that providers are devoted to guaranteeing quality, it also functions as a key differentiator between competitors in increasingly saturated markets.
Successfully receiving compliance accreditation involves adhering to stringent legal and safety standards, and a rigorous audit process, making the business better equipped to manage risk and reducing the likelihood of accidents or costly legal challenges.
Achieving compliance accreditation isn’t a single milestone. Laws and regulations are constantly changing, and businesses must remain alert and on top of latest legislation. The serial reviewing and auditing processes involved with compliance not only highlight key areas for refinement but also foster a company culture driven by a desire for constant improvement.
Being a compliant business could also offer tangible financial benefits. The ongoing assessments involved in upholding compliance accreditations make businesses more likely to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for cost saving, as well as the potential increased return from attracting more customers.
Compliance in the Serviced Apartment Industry
The requirements of the modern business traveller evolve with trends in the wider corporate landscape, and expectations of compliance change with them. It’s important that the serviced apartment sector stays informed with the latest compliance best practice. This ensures not only the legality of operations, but also the safety and satisfaction of guests, who expect not just a place to stay when making bookings, but also security and peace of mind.
There are 3 key stakeholder groups concerned with serviced apartment compliance, each of which will have a different role to play in ensuring compliance adherence throughout the booking process.
Compliance for serviced apartment operators – property providers have a responsibility to ensure the compliance of their units when it comes to guest safety and security in order to ensure the satisfaction of their guests.
Compliance for serviced apartment bookers and guests – serviced apartment clients will have their own health and safety, and travel programme policies. Wherever they book and whoever they book with, it's in the client’s best interest to ensure the property provider and booking agents’ compliance standards align with their own.
Compliance for serviced apartment agents – serviced apartment agents mediate the link between client and provider, so hold a vital role in ensuring bookers feel certain that their stay will run smoothly, and their data be protected.
Despite variations existing between these stakeholder categories, there are some core elements of compliance that are relevant to all. These include:
Safety:
While cost and location continue to reign predominant in the client mind, this doesn’t negate the importance of health, safety, and security. Instead, these are viewed by clients as a basic that must already be met by providers, freeing clients up to consider more negotiable elements of their stay.
Data Privacy:
The booking process involves accessing key personal data. In the digital age, the protection of this data is absolute. Serviced apartment providers are bound by data protection laws, such as GDPR in Europe, to safeguard the personal information of guests.
Travel Policy:
Every organisation will have their own travel policy stipulating all the rules and guidelines necessary to managing their business travellers, from expense budgets to booking advances and more. Compliance to this, from all serviced apartment stakeholder groups, is fundamental.
Compliance at SilverDoor
Compliance underpins all we do at SilverDoor – our technology tools, operator acquisition and onboarding processes, and account management procedures are all governed in the best safety and security frameworks.
Not only do we make every effort to ensure our own compliance, we also recognise our vital role as an intermediary. Compliance is more impactful via open communication throughout the whole supply chain. At SilverDoor, we engage with our supply chain to provide insights into client requirements and demands, and to support partners in meeting contemporary compliance regulations.
This begins with our onboarding process. Property providers must fulfil a number of compliance criteria before being considered for our portfolio.
Partners must confirm they meet and comply with essential Health, Safety and Security criteria aligned with SilverDoor’s minimum standards for property partners.
Potential partners are screened by SilverDoor’s Acquisitions Specialists using the Dow Jones Risk Assessment tool – which enables us to ensure our portfolio is fully vetted in areas relevant to ESG, CSR, and corruption and bribery, among others, all overseen by our Quality Assurance and Compliance Manager.
Partners must agree to complete a pre-arrival checklist with criteria in areas relating to quality, health and safety, apartment facilities, and location.
Partners must sign our Partner Agreement contract, stipulating our minimum expectations and requirements.
Hear from our Quality Assurance and Compliance Manager on the ins and outs of his role and the importance of compliance to the functioning of SilverDoor:
Ensuring client safety and satisfaction with compliance is an ongoing commitment. After onboarding providers, we collaborate with them to ensure every property consistently upholds our standards:
Our property management system, SilverDoor Connect, requires property operators to complete 75 health and safety fields as part of their property profiles and update this information every 30 days to ensure ongoing compliance.
We also hold regular partner review meetings with property managers to enhance performance and elevate standards.
We host our annual Partner Engagement Day, along with other regional partner events throughout the year, to ensure transparency and collaboration throughout our operations.
Our SilverDoor Verified Assessment scheme combines our targeted inspection programme with every SilverDoor property visit. We personally visit and assess properties in our portfolio as per stringent guidelines, designed to inspect essential health and safety criteria alongside a qualitative assessment, to support our client recommendations.
In the most recent financial year (23/24 FY) we have again undertaken in excess of 1000 separate visits/stays, involving 170+ SilverDoorians, in 75+ different Towns and Cities, across 30+ countries on 4 continents.
With the sector’s largest property portfolio and the most comprehensive sets of booking data, we understand the needs of agents, operators and bookers, and facilitate an open dialogue for collaboration and improvement.
Read through our latest tried and tested blog for a detailed example of our SilverDoor verified scheme come to life. Or for more information on the specific compliance accreditations held here at SilverDoor, head to our compliance page.
