IMPORTANCE OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN A HOTEL MANAGEMENT COURSE

 

INTRODUCTION

The hospitality industry belongs to the service sector, where people are entangled with each other. Managing people's relationship is necessary for business success. Employees, suppliers, managers, creditors, government and other stakeholders always show a keen interest in the revenue earned by the hotel – the ultimate survival of the firm. Gaining positive reviews, embracing more guests, facilitating quality guest service, managing the reservation system and drafting marketing strategies have become an indispensable part for any hotel business. Hotel Customer Relationship Management is important at the initial stage. So, Customer Relationship Management should be brought into the Hotel Management Course, which can help the fresh blood to understand the needs of a hotel and retain the guests.

MEANING OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Customer Relationship Management comprises of three words - Customer, Relationship and Management. ‘Customers’ acquire products or services to resell or buy for other people rather than for their own use. On the other hand, the ‘consumer’ is the individual who uses the goods or service for their own consumption, or if someone else purchases it for them, they consume it themselves. In this article, the customer is signified as the guest who visits the hotel. Guests spend money to book a hotel room, buy a meal or arrange a specific event on the premises. The next term is relationship in CRM, which refers to the multidimensional flow of communication, information, or connection with people who are related to each other. The last term is Management. Koontz says that “management is the art of getting things done through others effectively and efficiently”. In the CRM context, management is the ability to manage the guest experience, guest satisfaction, and retain them. Customer Relationship Management helps the hotels to manage interactions with guests using historical data and potential guests through online sources. It is beyond contact management.

WHY CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT IN HOTEL SECTOR?

CRM is a pervasive business strategy, whereas the hotel sector is highly in touch with its customers (guests). All the departments in the hotel sector and all the levels need to be well versed in managing the relationships with guests, dealing with them. Below are the reasons that state why CRM is required in hotels: -

 

1.     Understanding the needs and wants of the guests: - Each individual has different wants but has the same needs. Understanding the wants of the guests is imperative as it builds customer satisfaction and helps in retaining the existing guests.

 

2.     Marketing tool: - In the hotel sector, CRM is used as a marketing strategy that acts an edge over its competitor. Direct marketing campaigns like use of email writing, text messages, whatsapp messages can trigger guest action, re-bookings.

 

3.     Guest profile management: - The hotel maintains the guest data from various sources like the front desk, the hotel's website and agencies. Profiling the guest list makes hotel a valuable source for reaching out to them.

 

4.     Increased Revenue: - Revenue is significant for building meaningful relationships with the guests, as revenue comes from guests.

 

5.     Reducing the cost: - Retaining the customers is less expensive than acquiring new one. Repeat customer seems to be loyal as they require less influence. They are already familiarised with the hotel and need less marketing efforts.

 

6.     Improving personalised experiences of guests: - Dealing with the guest expectations is one of the most difficult challenges and meeting their expectations can become the opportunity. Understanding the guest expectation and providing the tailor made solutions can help the hotels to increase revenue, build business image and expand the market share.

 

STRATEGIES FOR PROMOTING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN THE HOTEL SECTOR

1.     CRM Software: - There are various hotel CRM systems that can help them make a necessary decision.

(i)              ALICE by Actabl

(ii)            Cendyn CRM

(iii)          Daily Point

(iv)          Experience Hotel

(v)            For-sight

(vi)          Hubspot

(vii)        Navis

(viii)      Profitroom

(ix)          Repatize

(x)            Revinate

(xi)          Salesforce

(xii)        Scales Fast

These tools can help hotels to boost the operational efficiency by creating a consolidated guest profile, establish better connectivity with the guest, analysing the data from various sources, integrating various departments for business growth and track the useful feedback from the guests.

2.     Building Customer Loyalty Programme: - A Loyal guest is what a hotel craves for! The Hotel Loyalty Program acts as a reward for the existing guests to attract and retain them by offering benefits and privileges. The following is a list of some hotel loyalty programs that hotels have implemented.

(i)              Marriott Bonvoy – Offers points on each hotel stay, car renting and dining. Guests can redeem these points on reaching 'Elite Status' and can enjoy benefits like up upgrade of rooms, accessing the lounge and late checkouts.

(ii)            Hilton Honours – Hilton Honours gives its existing guests access to unlock the different perks. Hilton has categorised different tiers as members – silver, gold and diamond. Offer them exclusive benefits like daily food and beverage credit, room upgrades, discounted lodging rates, and free stays for the fifth night with every point of redemption.

(iii)          Hyatt – Hyatt renders its customers 30% off in addition to free breakfast, private villas, condos, and room residences that are all created by the hotel chain as Loyalty Programme.

(iv)          Radisson – Exclusive members of Radisson can explore, enjoy and indulge in the membership club by giving discount on stay, food and beverages and priority live on check ins and outs.

 

3.     Customer Oriented: - Hotels that are unable to forge a cordial relationship with their customers are not long-term focused. Hotels should pursue to deliver guest services that enhance the overall guest experience.

 

4.     Segmentation and targeting: - Segmentation means dividing the market into groups into certain criteria. Hotels can segment the customer into groups based on needs, choices and behavioural patterns. Hotels can strategize the marketing promotional offers by providing tailor-made experiences to the targeted customer.

 

5.     Optimising the communication campaigns: - Marketers should understand that appropriate message should be targeted to the segmented audience. So, it becomes crucial to create an effective message. By providing an eye catchy pertinent content will aid in enforcing the loyal customers.

 

 

 

 

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN A HOTEL MANAGEMENT COURSE

The dictionary meaning of hospitality is “looking after the guests and being friendly and welcoming towards them.” Hospitality is derived from the Latin word 'hospes' meaning host, visitor or a stranger. Possessing warm, cordial and empathetic qualities will help a hotelier to understand the customer.

This article has already discussed about the meaning of CRM, importance of CRM in hotel sector and strategies that can be adopted. So, it's essential for future hotel employees to understand how to deal with, handle and maximise the guest experience.

Many educational institutes follow the curriculum of CRM, Customer Service and Hospitality Marketing as distinct subjects in their course. CRM as a subject explains the concepts of CRM, scope, importance, industry trends, Guest Loyalty Programmes, CRM Software, etc. Hotel management course demonstrate the learners to understand imparting the best customer service. Beside this the future hoteliers should be aware of handling the customer relations.

THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN A COURSE ON HOTEL MANAGEMENT

1.     Customer Relationship Management integrates as an interdisciplinary course to learn and understand customer needs, wants and behaviour. CRM is a ubiquitous study that is studied in the field of hospitality marketing as well. It is used as one of the P of Marketing Mix (Promotion) as sales promotional technique in the form of customer loyalty programmes. The future hotelier can use this tactic to increase the revenue of the hotel and retain the existing customers.

 

2.     Every student enrolled in the hotel management course is a future hotelier. It's the core duty as hotelier to know about the customers they are delivering services to. Segmentation of customers on a certain basis will help the hotels to identify their customer base. Catering to specific group of customer can help in identifying certain needs and wants of them. Hoteliers use this as a business strategy to obtain long term profitability, revenue and increased customer experiences

 

3.     Customers have multiple options for selecting a hotel. They are not brand loyal in today's era. Customers are prone to switch over from one hotel to another. . Researches states that retaining existing customer is less costly in comparison to acquiring new one. Students can therefore understand the cost benefit analysis in retaining the existing guests.

 

4.     The prevalent tool in hotel marketing is CRM.  It's critical to comprehend and analyse consumer behaviour in the hotel industry.  Businesses typically fail because they can't adjust to changes in the outside world. Understanding consumer behaviour, purchasing trends, and meeting customer expectations will help future hoteliers predict guest behaviour and adjust to needs and changes.

 

5.     Hotels that practice CRM have an impact on corporate image. The hotel management course focuses on delivering the best service quality to the guest and upholding the image of the organisation.

 

6.     The Front Office Department collects and manages the data of guests. The Front Desk and Contact Management are discussed in hotel management courses. Implementing CRM helps to analyse the customer's trends, patterns and behaviour from the data collected by the Front Office. Contacting these customers through social media and the internet will aid in the creation of the e-CRM that impacts multi-channel access of analysing the customer decision-making process. Numerous CRM software programs that are utilised by several organisations to carry out CRM techniques are presented in this article.

 

7.     Market has evolved over a period of time. Traditional methods to do the work do not fetch the results. CRM strategy helps the hoteliers and future hoteliers to adopt the changes and get the right plan implemented. Times like Covid-19 have made the hotel sector to view market differently. It has highly impacted the hospitality sector. Older methods needs to be drifted to new methods and simplify hotel operations making customer friendly approach.

 

8.     CRM is not a feeling of gut. Rather, CRM is based on real patterns of data history of guests. The stored information can be converted into actionable insights and the future hoteliers can use the information based on data. Using historical data and predictive analysis, the future hoteliers can forecast the demand and charge the appropriate prices of the services.

 

9.     The methods for implementing CRM should be included in the Hotel Management course. This article has already talked about the ways through which CRM can be espoused. Combining, storing and analysing the customer information, upselling the services by sending on emails/whatsapp messages, usage of CRM software, maintaining the e-reputation etc. Future hoteliers will be able to employ all of these techniques as strategic initiatives in the hotel industry.

 

This article aimed to provide the insights about Customer Relationship Management in the hotel sector. With changing times, there is a need to understand the sophisticated guest choices. As a part of future hotelier, the hotel management courses should inculcate the importance of CRM that enhance the revenue, acquiring and retaining the customers.