Customer Service Management for Tourism and Hospitality

This study explores the application of the Gartner CRM model in the travel and tourism sectors, with a focus on the Hoxton Hotel Group. The study highlights the importance of CRM in building customer relationships and increasing customer satisfaction.

Customer Service Management for tourism and
Hospitality
1

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Task One..........................................................................................................................................5
Task two.........................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................16
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................17
2

Executive summary
The study will be based on the topic and the understanding of the CRM (Customer relationship
management) in helping the travel and tourism sectors to develop in a strategic way. The
explanation and the usage of the Gartner CRM model will be applied to a specific organisation
and the near about development of the company by the application of the tool. The CRM Model
is used in the customer retention which will be elaborated in the study for better understanding of
the CRM Application.
3

Introduction
The business organisation is the one which depends on the customer feedbacks and reviews to
make further development in their operational activities which is promoted by usage of CRM.
The main motive of any business organisation’s operating system is to cater to the demands and
wishes of the customer (Buttle and Maklan, 2015). The customer feedbacks and reviews are later
considered by numerous organisations to further develop their products and services. To relate to
the concepts of the customer satisfaction the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Model
is being used. Therefore, in this study the customer relationship management model of Gartner
which is a synchronised and systematic process .This is used to analyse the factors to cater to the
customer relationship and their management The CRM Model is used in relation to the operating
of the travel and tourism industries which mainly deals with service to customers. The second
part will be related to the functioning of Hoxton in understanding and maintaining customer
relationship management (CRM).
4

Task One
Identify and discuss the different components of the Gartner CRM model that a Tourism or
Hospitality organisation could follow in order to build relationships with customers.
Definition
Customer Relationship Management is a tactical and strategic way to cater to the needs and demands
of the customers to earn profit and bring the growth of a company and as customers are considered to
be one of the important stakeholders of any travel and tourism sectors. The hospitality sectors
generally constitutes of satisfying the customers and seeing they do not have any inconvenience in
the tour they have planned. The loyalty and dedication are considered to be main factors of the
customer relationship which can attract more customers to the travel and tourism sector. The
implication of the Gartner CRM model along with the technological advances they help the
organisation to go on a strategically way. The understanding of the customer relationship can be
understood with the help of the model and therefore they can also in a most effective way understand
the demands level of the customers virtually and also practically.
Overview
The Gartner Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was established and popularised in the year
in the year 1997, by the hard work of Siebel, Gartner and the company IBM (International Business
machines Corporation).The same year of the establishments of the CRM Model, it was named after
Gartner. The CRM strategy got aligned with products which were exported to other countries and
places with their own marketing capabilities. A mobile application was established by Siebel in the
year 1999 called the Siebel Sales Handheld which is related to the utilisation of the CRM model in
making good relationship with the customers in their business processes. The further establishment
of the CRM model was done by the Pepper and Rogers in the year 2004 which was designated with
the name of IDIC Model which is a systematic four step model. The Gartner gives a more systematic
and Processes model to follow in the building up of customer relationship and it has an eight steps of
strategic analysis of the CRM Model. The Gartner Model has been the most preferred model of CRM
and has been stated as the “True CRM”.
5

Figure 1: The Eight Building Blocks of CRM
(Source: Gartner, 2019)
Why all 8 building blocks of the model are essential for successful CRM
The Gartner CRM Model is the strong framework which was developed by Gartner along with
his friend Siebel. The important aspects of the CRM Model of Gartner is that helps the necessary
parts of the business organisation and the strategies in the approach to reach their goals and
objectives to cater and build up an organisation with effective customer relationship
management(CRM). The travel and tourism sectors can use this model to access and organise
their work or activities aligned to these eight steps. The eight step approach of the CRM model
generally helps in larger business related enterprises and travel and tourism sectors generally
deal with the customer feedbacks and satisfaction. Therefore, the model is very much necessary
for the travel and tourism sectors. The eight steps in relation to the CRM are as follows:
 Vision
 Strategies
 Customer Satisfaction
 Organisational Collaboration
6

 Processes
 CRM information Collection
 Technological advances
 Metrics
The Initial two stages of the Eight Step Model which, are vision and Strategies which helps an
organisation to have a strategic plan and the strategies are to be implemented accordingly on the
organisation to get positive customer reaction and feedbacks. The application can be different for
the other types of organisation but the CRM Model is also applied to the Small enterprises as
much as it is applied and benefitted in the larger enterprises.
Fragmented CRM Approaches
The importance of CRM in making business strategy is the price and the investments the travel
and tourism sectors, and it follows up the understanding that every levels of customers are
important be to a budget friendly customers and along with the Elite group of peoples. The
Utilisation of the CRM approaches is implemented for understanding the psychology of the
customers and the analysing of the behaviour to make their services more refined and fecund for
the organisational development and growth.
True CRM
True CRM is referred to the Gartner CRM Model and as it has eight steps to follow it gives the
organisation chance to operate in a much systematic manner. The Gartner CRM model helps in
chalking out the strategies and the tactics for catering to the successful operations of the
infrastructure. The true model of customer relation is used to increase the profit and productivity
of the organisation as well as the building up of customer relation by applying the relationship
strategies which will also increase the productivity of the travel and tourism body. The motive of
the CRM in making strategic approaches is in the way of winning, development, giving relevant
and quality services and the maintaining of the relationship with the customers.
For examples, of practices to be applied is one of the best and the oldest hospitality business
structure Thomas Cook, which promotes new campaigns for promoting better relationship
among the customers. They have taken measures to improve the facilities by applying
7

technological advances in the infrastructures functionalities; the technology will keep the
transparency and genuine business operations among the tour operators and tourists. The Thomas
Cook follows the renewed customer focus in their campaigns of building up the CRM
management to a much productive level. The other best practices related to the CRM which are
followed by larger to smaller organisations as well. The practices are illustrated below:
 Identifying suitable customers- The organisation should target specific customers
which are dependent on their services and build the trust and loyalty among them
eventually building up the customer relationship. The Thomas Cook therefore keeps the
elite customers which are dependent on them for travelling and touring purposes. The
identification of the customer and the type the organisation want target should be chalked
out first to maintain or building the relationship with the customers and therefore it is
considered to be one of the best practices in initialising the CRM.
 The measurement of the customer satisfaction-The measuring of the customer
satisfaction are measured through some specification and measuring it with the statistics
and the performance done by the company. The measurement are done as follows:
 Organising surveys like the hospitality sectors keep a complaint and feedback page in
their websites so that they can keep track of the drawbacks addressed by the customers
and according to that they can develop further.
 The tracking of the customers which has stopped purchasing or taking services from the
organisation should be analysed and won back to preserve their impression as a good and
reliable hospitality sectors. They take relevant measures to win back those customers by
understanding their inconvenience caused and give them offers in relation to the
possibility of giving them better facilities.
 Maintaining the customers-The maintenance of the customers can be done by applying
the technological advances so that they can attract the customers more and keep the
services easy and handy to the customers. The updated technological services and the
websites can help the customer’s book their services easily be it from any part of the
world.
Statistics relevant to the CRM of Travel and tourism sectors are that CRM is the strategy for
business organisation especially the hospitality sectors to make a strategic approach to gain
8

competitive advantage for their company (Dedić and Stanier,2016).The Gartner Model for
implementing customer relation makes the organisation follow the customer satisfaction
approach. The catering to the demands and services of the customers will help the travel and
tourism sectors to be a sustainable organisation and operate productively in the long run.
According to the survey done by the Data Warehouse Institute has stated that the bigger
organisation has more $10 million projects which are related to the CRM approach. The
organisations are now taking the technological advances as well as the Information and
Communication Technology applied to gain more customers and build effective relationship
with them. The UNWTO (The World Tourism organisation) has also stated the application of
the CRM will help in the increasing development and profit annually by 4% in the travel and
tourism sectors. The increase will be more by the model implication increasing the growth rate
to 1.56 within the year 2020.
Figure 2: The application of CRM in development of travel and tourism business
(Source: Www2.unwto.org, 2019).
The CRM is generally divided in three divisions they are as follows:
 Operating
 Analytical
9

 Collaborative level
The effectiveness in application of the CRM is as follows:
 It helps in achieving the goals and objectives of the company strategically
 The CRM helps in strategic management of the travel and tourism sectors
 The CRM help in relevant collection of information
 The CRM will help in the further development in the performance of the employees
and the overall growth of the company
10

Task two
Apply the Gartner CRM model to the Hoxton Hotel Group and discuss how they are
currently creating or could create value, by embracing aspects of its daily business
activities where customers tend to be directly and regularly engaged.
Introduction
In this part of the study the application of the CRM model and the strategies in the hotel business
of the Hoxton which is a series of open house hotels which is surrounded by streets and streets
which mark their beauty and the view of the hotel are better to that attract more customers (The
Hoxton Hotel, 2019). In these study will therefore led to the application of the CRM Model in
building their customer relationship. The analysis of the effectiveness of the CRM model will be
described in this part of the study.
Immediate benefits and latent benefits of The Hoxton Hotel group implementing CRM
The Hoxton Group was first established in the Shoreditch in the year 2006.They are opening in
other parts of the United Kingdom and to understand the customers therein they will have to
apply the CRM Model. They have maintained the scenic beauty around their hotel services so
that they not only give them accommodation services but also they can give the travellers and
accommodators a remarkable and soothing area around them so that they can make the travellers
relax. The place of the UK they have planned to open their stores are Chicago, Southwark and
Shepherd Bush and San Francisco in the following years of 2019 and 2020.The implementation
of the Gartner CRM Model are as follows:
 They will be able to cater to the needs and demands of the customers and make more
relationship with the customers which will help them in building up their business.
 The innovative idea of keeping a scenic beauty in their hotel services will be marked as
the USP(Unique Selling Proposition) which is in of the strategies they can develop by the
help if the CRM Model (Wang et al.,2019)
 The CRM Model enables the usage of the Technological advances by the help of the
CRM model so that they can make their services technology savvy and attract more
customers worldwide through their sites and websites. These included the Latent effects
11

of the CRM model in the processing of the business processes of the Hoxton.
The immediate effects of the application of the CRM Model will be that
 The processes of the organisation will be systematic and synchronised
 The training of the employees will be considered according to the customer satisfaction
approach
 The management of the organisation will increase and become fruitful and fecund in its
functionalities.
Up-selling is the techniques of influencing and convincing the customers to make them buy the
high prices products. The elites group of people have the impression of high price with high
quality. Nevertheless, the application of the CRM model of Gartner will make them sell their up
selling products to preferable customers. The application of the CRM Model in the selling of the
up selling products are that the CRM model helps in catering to the demands and needs of the
customers. The customer retention is also one of the factors of the Gartner model which helps in
keeping up with the steady customers and caters to their needs and demands by keeping trust and
loyalty within them and the business operations. The same procedure goes for the gross selling
which means catering to the customers which are budget friendly and selling them products
which are of reasonable prices as well of quality. These can be a relevant strategy to attract
customers and also maintain the relation between the customers. These selling strategy and the
cross selling products will help in the strategic management of the Hoxton open hotels and
services.
The techniques by which they can acquire new customer by the implementation of the CRM
model is that it already gives strategic management and the application of the model in further
development can be done in the following manners
 By building loyalty and trust among the new customers they want to attract – by the
application of their CRM model to enhance their technological and online websites and
the usage of the visit tools in understanding the customer visits and preferences of the
customers. The tracking methods and the demands of the customers will help in
catering to more customer needs and demands.
 Managing the sales department to sell their products to all kinds of customers and then
12

Sales scopes by the application of the up-selling and cross selling. The analysing of
their whole selling process to make their management strategies more fecund.
Staff retention
The Staff retention can be done successfully by the application of the Customer relationship
management is that accurate training of the staffs to cater to the demands of the customers and
also understanding the value of the customer satisfaction in making their organisation
functionalities develop. On the other hand, the training of the Technological advances and their
handling should be given to the staffs of the hotel services so that they can easily apply the CRM
Model to keep their value proposition of the Hotel services The Hoxton to a much higher extent.
How the effective use of CRM software creates a coherent and cohesive body of
information that drives the value proposition for a given client
The CRM is the tool which can be utilised by the Hoxton to chalk out its attributes and
components to apply for their increase in value proposition. The CRM Model also insists the
training of the staffs so that they can easily cope up with the technological advances of the
company and cater to the tech savvy customers and make them attract to their procedures and
processes of the company. Apart from the CRM model the Seibel handheld device has also used
in developing the technological services of the company. The CRM will also help in making its
sales department to be specific and strategic about their selling products which will also help in
increasing their value proposition (Das and Mishra, 2019).
13

Figure 3: Survey to understand the opinions of the customers
(Source: SurveyMethods.com, 2019)
The survey by the help of the online tools and the survey give the change to the companies to
gain more customer preferences and they can also develop in their hotel services. The Hoxton
therefore should make surveys for better understanding of the customers and the training of the
employees to understand and interact with the customers well and in an ethical way (Mullins,
Dossor, 2013).
The products and the customer’s insight are acquired by the innovation processes of the hotel
services or the business infrastructures to attract the customers so that they can cater to the
services to the customers. The Hoxton has also applied the innovative sides for maintaining the
scenic beauty around their open hotels and they are also applying the same idea to the other
hotel services and the branches they are opening in other parts of the United Kingdom. The
unique selling proposition is very necessary to be different for the competitors and be the
different hotel services which the customers will get attracted. The services along with that
should be genuine and the transparency among them should be kept to make the steady
customers stay and prefer their services above all other hotel services.
Conclusion
14

This part of the study has related to the development and scattering of the Hoxton hotel by the
usage of the CRM model. The usage of the model and the increase in their organisational
functionalities has been the main topic of the study and has been elaborated in a detailed basis.
15

Conclusion
The study has emphasized on the various CRM approaches and the utilisation of the Gartner
CRM Model in achieving the customer demands and preferences for the travel and tourism
business sectors. The first part of the study has been referred to the growth of the travel and
tourism business by the application of the Gartner CRM Model. The various examples of
company in the hospitality sectors have been given in reference to the information about the
application of the CRM model. The model also has referred to the strategic development and
scattering of the company the Hoxton in second part of the study.
16

Bibliography
Buttle, F., and Maklan, S, 2015. Customer Relationship Management, concepts and technologies
(3rd ed.). Oxon: Routledge.
Buttle, F., and Maklan, S, 2015. Customer Relationship Management, concepts and technologies
(3rd ed.). Oxon: Routledge.
CRM Magazine, 2019. The Truth About Turnover. [online] Available at:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/The-Truth-About-
Turnover-45395.aspx [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].
Das, S. and Mishra, M., 2019. The Impact of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Practices on Customer Satisfaction. In Business Governance and Society (pp. 43-54). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Dedić, N. and Stanier, C., 2016. An evaluation of the challenges of multilingualism in data
warehouse development.
Gartner, 2019. Gartner: Fueling the Future of Business. [online] Available at:
https://www.gartner.com/en [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].
Girchenko, T., Ovsiannikova, Y. and Girchenko, L., 2017. CRM System as a Keystone of
Successful Business Activity. Knowledge-Economy Society: Management in the Face of
Contemporary Challenges and Dilemmas, pp.251-261.
Herman, G.V., Grama, V. and Stupariu, I.M., 2016. The international organisation between
globalization and regionalization. Case study: World Tourism Organization. Revista Română de
Geografie Politică, 28(2), pp.49-59.
Hudson, S and L, 2013. Customer Service for Hospitality and Tourism.1st Ed. Oxford:
Goodfellow Publishing.
Mullins, L; Dossor, P, 2013. Hospitality Management and Organisational Behaviour, 5th Ed,
Pearson.
17

SurveyMethods.com, 2019. Customers of Competitors | Survey Your Competitors’ Customers.
[online] Available at: https://surveymethods.com/kb/customers-of-competitors/ [Accessed 4 Mar.
2019].
The Hoxton Hotel, 2018, June, 18. Hoxtonhotels. Retrieved June 18, 2018, from
TheHoxtonHotels: https://thehoxton.com
The Hoxton Hotel, 2018, June, 18. Hoxtonhotels: https://thehoxton.com
Wang, Y., Huang, L., Li, J. and Yang, Y., 2019. The mechanism of tourism slogans on travel
intention based on Unique Selling Proposition (USP) theory. Journal of Travel & Tourism
Marketing, 36(4), pp.415-427.
Www2.unwto.org, 2019. Why tourism? | World Tourism Organization UNWTO. [online]
Available at: http://www2.unwto.org/content/why-tourism [Accessed 4 Mar. 2019].
18