Lee Jamieson explores the latest developments in customer relationship management technology

The concept behind customer relationship management (CRM) is nothing new for the hospitality industry. The idea of personalising the hospitality experience around the individual needs of your guests has long been the key to a successful operation, but advancements in CRM technology have enabled hoteliers to form much closer relationships with their guests than ever before.

“CRM systems provide a holistic view of the customer relationship, including customer activities, history and preferences,” explains Chuck Schaeffer, CEO of Aplicor, a CRM provider.

“Making this information available to all customer facing staff will permit each employee to speak with a consistent voice and can dramatically improve the response and relationship with individual guests.”

By building up intimate customer profiles, it is possible to set guest room preferences in advance, offer them their favourite drink upon arrival, or even ensure that a customer’s allergy is catered for without the guest needing to ask.

The opportunities are endless and creating such highly-personalised relationships with a customer base can increase levels of customer service, encourage customer loyalty in the long-term and enable the hotelier to create highly-targeted promotional campaigns.

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Tracking guests

Raffles Dubai uses CRM technology to build its reputation for guest recognition and for offering tailored guest experiences, as director of marketing and communications, Dima Ayad explains.

“Naturally, most five-star hotels abide by these core standards, but we carefully log every guest’s experience and leverage that data when they return.

“To track regular guests, we use a CRM system called Raffles Ambassadors. This dedicated programme entices our guests to visit us time and time again. We celebrated someone’s 50th stay at the end of 2009 — the property’s only been open for two years!”

Evidently, a robust CRM system can monetise guest data, but the technology also has a part to play in the organisation’s strategic direction. Now that CRM technology has reached a level of maturity, business leaders can use it to implement a customer-centric growth strategy. It allows them to closely monitor trends, understand customer behaviour in the long-term and more effectively measure how integral the brand’s core values are in the customer experience. In this respect, CRM can lead to stronger brand identity.

Challenge of integration

In order for CRM to achieve its strategic potential, suppliers and developers must find a way to integrate the many different CRM systems currently in use.

“Hoteliers are demanding increased system integration between CRM systems and their legacy systems,” says Schaeffer. “Getting all customer information into a single system of record is paramount for achieving a 360 degree customer view.”

But hospitality is a complex industry and finding a one-size-fits-all solution can be problematic. Therefore, Raffles Dubai, like many hotels, uses different CRM systems in different parts of its business: Opera is used for day-to-day CRM processing, Raffles Ambassadors is dedicated to selected repeat guests and another system called Famous Agents is used by travel agents supplying the business.

But according to GuestWare vice president Mike Benjamin, using different systems is confusing.

“CRM technology has become confusing for hoteliers because so many aspects of hospitality technology involve CRM. Everything from email marketing and loyalty systems to concierge and problem resolution tools can be part of a brand’s CRM strategy. This is too much to take on all at once, so the key is to have a high-level overall CRM strategy before jumping into one specific technology,” says Benjamin.