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ABTA Magazine Are You Being Served? Three big words have found their way into the industry and travel companies should now be paying more attention to the to their customers. Maria Pieri sees what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) really means. Leading Hospitality In the hospitality industry, Amateo believes that up to $296 million is being wasted on the implementation of CRM systems and other technologies that were designed to be used by industries outside the hotel sector. Amateo chief executive Matthew Maxwell says: hospitality industry is the largest service industry in the world, yet it is lacking CRM systems that financial institutions have, for example, enabling them to integrate closely with the existing client. We have spent a long time developing this product the banks and telecoms industries have been doing this for years. Amateo guest optimisation product sits above hotel systems and can work on every system. It is able to identify a guest by type and segment, such as income, type of job and which product they buy. Technology is what lets most people down the hotel business knows what it needs to do, but it needs enabling technology to execute strategy. For example, when sending out loyalty cards, the loyalty applications programmes may inadvertently send out four cards this will stop it doing so , says Maxwell. must understand your customers and deliver the service they want and then add to it. This product will gather all information about the customer across all hotels, extract all the information, analyse and identify what and why they are buying , he adds. Choice Hotels has implemented the Amateo software in a deal valued at £3 million. are unique there is no other complete end-to-end technology for the hotel industry , adds Maxwell. Describing the panic reaction that followed the events of September 11th, Maxwell believes hotel discounting is not the way forward, but instead a refocus on the marketing. at whether it is European, local or regional, understand who the customer is and go after them in a targeted. Market smartly , he advises. Companies claim they know about 50% of their loyal customer base, but in reality this can be as low as 20%. So there clearly a long way to go before customers can be communicated to and marketed to in the most effective way. Published in ABTA Magazine (Association of British Travel Agents) - December 2001 |
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