ChainConnect Certification Process – Travelife for Accommodation

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The ChainConnect certification process

Step 1

Initial meeting with Travelife

Your Travelife Account Manager will set up a meeting with the relevant staff from your headquarters. This is to help us understand your current sustainability initiatives and goals. You will be given the ChainConnect Head Office Checklist that explains what documents and records you need to prepare. At this stage you will also assess each of the properties that have joined Travelife in order to prioritise when they will start their certification process.

Step 2

Head office document check

This will take place online or at your corporate headquarters with your Travelife Account Manager and a Certifications Specialist or Approved Auditor. They will review the records, policies, procedures and reports you have prepared relating to legislation, business permits, labour, human rights, environmental management, community and guest engagement.

Step 3

Document check report

This will be prepared by your Travelife Certifications Specialist or Approved Auditor. It will explain any improvements that need to be made to your sustainability documentation before moving to the next stage.

Step 4

Prepare individual properties for their audits

This involves the head office working with each property to assess themselves against the Travelife Certification Requirements, then implementing a plan to make any required improvements before their audit takes place. Both the head office and staff at the individual properties will have full access to the resources, templates and examples in the Customer Support Website. Each property will follow the usual process for Travelife audits that you can click here to view. If you have coordinated the preparation for these centrally and have made our recommended improvements on your corporate documents, you can expect each property to have a more straight forward and successful certification experience.

Step 5

The inspection audits

These will be scheduled when you let us know each property is ready. Wherever feasible, this will all be undertaken by the same Approved Auditor and we will ensure they are familiar with the outcomes of your Document Check. Depending on the size of the property, an audit can take up to eight hours to complete, sometimes longer for very complex locations. The auditor will need access to all areas, will choose some staff to interview and will need to see a selection of unoccupied guest rooms. The Customer Support Website contains more information on what to expect from inspection audits and how to prepare for them.

Step 6

Audit reports and improvements

The Auditor will complete a detailed Audit Report that is sent to Travelife for a series of quality checks before being made available for you to review. This process can take up to 28-days. The Travelife Certifications Team will advise you about any further improvements each property needs to make. You will need to each property completes their improvements within six months. If your Audit Report identifies more than 40 areas needing improvement or you do not complete your improvements on time, you will need to schedule a new audit at your own cost. Once all the improvements are completed the property will receive their Travelife Certification.

Step 7

Maintaining each property’s certification

As described in the Accommodation Certification Agreement, each property must maintain compliance with the Travelife Certification Requirements at all times. The Agreement also describes the process Travelife follows if we find a property is no longer compliant with one or more of the requirements before their certification expires.

Approximately 1 year after each inspection audit it will be necessary for each property to undergo a remote certification check-up audit. In most cases, the same auditor that carried out the inspection audit will also be assigned to work on the remote audit.

This is a simple process that involves uploading information (e.g. documents, filling out forms) to a special area of Evergreen that you can access via your property’s Evergreen dashboard. Please note that this new area of Evergreen will not be available until 2025 when Travelife expects the first remote check-up audits to take place. Travelife will email the main contact person they have on file for the property to remind them that the certification check-up is due and to explain the process. If a property fails their certification check-up audit, their certification will be withdrawn and they will need to begin the recertification process again.