Marriot International and CRM PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Marriot International and CRM PDF

Description

Marriot International and CRM According to the global marketing officer for Marriott International, Karin Timpone (2019), , the company’s aim is “doing whatever it takes to take care of customers», and has long been preferred by its customers due to its excellent service as well as strong brand reputation (Solis, 2018). Marriott International’s sales vision is to build profitable relationships by understanding the customer’s different needs and adapt products and services accordingly. The company achieves its vision by putting focus on finding, attracting and retaining highvalue customers (Marriott International, 2019b). Marriott International operates several CRM practices such as Marriott Rewards, corporate account management, guest satisfaction surveys, and software solutions (Marriott International, 2019b).

Marriott International’s loyalty program, Marriott Rewards, is the foundation for the company’s customer relationship strategy. With more than 28 million members, Marriot Rewards serves information that helps the company to determine customer value, target marketing messages, and use critical customer knowledge to predict future travel behaviour of Marriott´s customers. The loyalty program supplies a cost-effective, revenue building component to reach customers who have the potential of being most profitable for the company. In 2007, Marriott Rewards members contributed for 50 percent of Marriott´s guest and after joining the loyalty program, members nearly double their number of trips to Marriott hotels. (Marriott International, 2019b). This indicates that Marriott Rewards is a successful strategy to keep customers using their services again.

Marriott International has developed a “customer recognition platform” powered by the marketing platform, Salesforce, that is designed to manage a continuous interaction with members of its loyalty programs. The platform provides Marriott International with a 360degree view of their guests to deliver a personalised services to the members (Salesforce, 2019). Salesforce’s CRM platform will cover all communication across guest channels including web, call centres, mobile and within its hotels (Kaplan, 2018). The CRM platform allows members of its loyalty programme to make requests for their stay at Marriott through an online chat service, such as Apple Business Chat. Using “customer recognition platform” makes it easier for Marriott to meet the expectations of customers and keep them satisfied through their stay.

To serve their guest with more personalized services, Marriot International uses the information of customers stored in their CRM software. Each Marriott customer can be identified through a unique membership number which gives the staff information on guests such as food and drink preferences and newspaper choice (Salesforce, 2019). Accordingly, repeat guests/members are greeted with personalised services. Marriott Rewards along with the CRM software helps the hotel chain to capture and analyse volumes of customer data, hence, Marriott has built up a reputation for knowing what their customers want and need (Marriott International, 2019b).

Marriott uses Guest Satisfaction Survey (GSS) to track customers feedback after a stay. This satisfaction survey is known to be extremely important in the hotel industry. Hotel guests, who have been happy with their stay, are likely to come back again and possibly recommend the hotel. Therefore, it is essential for Marriott to encourage hotel guest to evaluate their stay by identifying if the stay fulfilled the guest´s expectation and if there were areas for improvement. The survey gives an indication of which services are important for Marriott visitors (Marriott International, 2019b).

Marriott International has developed integrated sales and marketing efforts containing ecommerce, revenue management, channel strategy and analysis, and stellar marketing support. These resources are implemented to build brand equity, generate demand, optimize revenue, and create loyalty and preference by delivering personalized content to the right customer at the right time (Marriott International, 2019b). Marriott uses various channels such as print media, digital media like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Instagram’ and the Marriott mobile app. For example, can a campaign targeted to their target segment inspire customers to travel to a destination or provide recommendations for what to do in a destination after a stay has been booked (Kaplan, 2018). By using modern medias like ´Facebook´ and ´Instagram´, It shows that Marriott is up to date and connected with younger audiences.

These CRM strategies have been successful in driving Marriott Internationals performance. CRM has improved the company’s customer satisfaction, profitability, brand loyalty and sales, and customers have reported that they feel valued by the way the company recognizes and fulfil their needs and expectations for their stay (Solis, 2018)....