Systems supporting guest loyalty
By Paul Manley
3/14/2007
URL: http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=95
Summary
Guest loyalty program in hospitality industry started from mid 1970s for guest recognition, direct mail, pre populating name and the address information for direct reservation. During the 1990s, as technology evolved, large hotel companies were giving points to the customers each time when the guest stayed in the property (similar to the airline point programs). Beside the point system, benefit program providing services such as upgrade room, concierge level service and guaranteed reservations were also added into guest loyalty program lately. Point system, benefit system or combination of both, are a component of customer relationship management strategy where the goal is to maximize a customer’s lifetime value. The technology components that support the guest loyalty program which is mentioned above can be grouped into database, application and integration technologies.
Database
Core of the database system; there is a loyalty base system which keeps data associated with member address, tier status, points of transactions, partners and data associated with business rules. There is a transaction database that records the period of stay, the member number and etc. Data marts are produced to serve specific group (marketing department) to effectively analyze the data.
Applications
Applications support the business requirements for guest loyalty program and it can be divided into three groups. Firstly, enrollment of new members and maintenance of demographics is covered by the member profile management. Secondly, accounting tracks all earnings and reimbursement. And lastly, member services covers the call center and web applications for member profile management.
Integration
Depending on the context that is used, integration can be either technically oriented or user oriented. It is called technical orientation when one system (core loyalty program) passes data to another system (various systems such as corporate database). User orientation associates more with the business process engineering (example; reports dissatisfaction to prevent in the near future time).
Reflection
I really enjoyed reading this article because it had showed me the brief idea of how guest loyalty program is used, organized and works in reality. However, the article itself used too many jargons; hence, it was difficult to understand the whole article from my perspective. Guest loyalty programs are used as strategy for customer relationship management in hospitality industry. And to provide better service and product that will exceed customer’s expectations, there have to be a supporting system that will provide every bits of information that the property needs to serve and satisfy the guest. Understanding the support system and how it is structured can be useful for the future hotel managers to facilitate the system. For example, when a guest opt out a specific function such as marketing communications hotel managers may offer a product or service package with an email or direct mail by using data marts. Data marts (one part of database) that are created to serve specific department can develop an analyst on trends, preferences or profiles in detail. Also, to acquire new members it supports several marketing campaigns such as seasonal promotions, emails and/or direct mails.
By, personalizing the marketing campaigns in detail, it would increase revenue to the property and also guest satisfaction.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
blog 1
Technology in Hospitality
Fits, Frustration and Failures
By Michael L. Kasanava Ph.D
URL : http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=100
Summary
The author specified 12 main reasons why fits, frustration and failures happen in technology of hospitality industry
1. insufficient training – training sessions are normally conducted by the representatives of the vendors in different formats such as classroom, on site and online training which is very expensive.
2. Managerial apathy – lack of interest from the management participation in project planning, installation and implementation.
3. Resistance to change – employees who will oppose to the new tech due to the complexity of procedure and process
4. Data conversion – previous historical data’s are not installed properly when the new system is purchased and installed
5. Application difficulty – applications appear too complex to initialize (may create the management to operate without complete information)
6. Improper scalability – assumptions of linearity has lead failure to applications (application systems differ from sizes of the premises)
7. Interface complexities – hardware can be connected easily whereas interconnect components can not, especially while their trying to share data.
8. Insufficient budgeting – the budget for technology to maintain the property is insufficient
9. Product underbidding – just to win from the bidding, a salesperson from the vendor would give a product with less programming or less than the optimal amount of equipment
10. Lack of ongoing training – most of the properties do not have a ongoing training sessions after the time of installation.
11. Inadequate vendor relations –to have adequate support service from the vendor, it must have a good constant and continous relationship with the property.
12. Non existent benchmark – technology being falsely evaluated.
Reflection
I strongly agree with the author’s article very much. Technology has been used not only in hospitality industry but also through out our whole life. It had made it possible to us to do such things in a very convenient, fast and efficient way, when it is used in a proper way. By knowing and learning from the pass mistakes, as what the author mentioned specifically 12 main reasons from this article, we can avoid those same things in the future. For example, interface complexities. From my past experience, I worked in one of the Starwood hotel which used Opera PMS(Property Management System), where as all the other Starwood property in that region used Delphi PMS. It was hard to communicate with other properties since they were using a different system. It took a lot of hassle, time and effort just to convert a simple data from their system to our system. In addition, lack of continuous training was also big conflict that we faced and arose very much in our property. Whenever a new employee was hired, appropriate tech application training session did not take place in any of the training session. Obviously, working efficiency of the new employee automatically declined.
Therefore, it is crucial and important to know how to implement and consider when using tech applications from the very beginning and throughout the operation.
Fits, Frustration and Failures
By Michael L. Kasanava Ph.D
URL : http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=100
Summary
The author specified 12 main reasons why fits, frustration and failures happen in technology of hospitality industry
1. insufficient training – training sessions are normally conducted by the representatives of the vendors in different formats such as classroom, on site and online training which is very expensive.
2. Managerial apathy – lack of interest from the management participation in project planning, installation and implementation.
3. Resistance to change – employees who will oppose to the new tech due to the complexity of procedure and process
4. Data conversion – previous historical data’s are not installed properly when the new system is purchased and installed
5. Application difficulty – applications appear too complex to initialize (may create the management to operate without complete information)
6. Improper scalability – assumptions of linearity has lead failure to applications (application systems differ from sizes of the premises)
7. Interface complexities – hardware can be connected easily whereas interconnect components can not, especially while their trying to share data.
8. Insufficient budgeting – the budget for technology to maintain the property is insufficient
9. Product underbidding – just to win from the bidding, a salesperson from the vendor would give a product with less programming or less than the optimal amount of equipment
10. Lack of ongoing training – most of the properties do not have a ongoing training sessions after the time of installation.
11. Inadequate vendor relations –to have adequate support service from the vendor, it must have a good constant and continous relationship with the property.
12. Non existent benchmark – technology being falsely evaluated.
Reflection
I strongly agree with the author’s article very much. Technology has been used not only in hospitality industry but also through out our whole life. It had made it possible to us to do such things in a very convenient, fast and efficient way, when it is used in a proper way. By knowing and learning from the pass mistakes, as what the author mentioned specifically 12 main reasons from this article, we can avoid those same things in the future. For example, interface complexities. From my past experience, I worked in one of the Starwood hotel which used Opera PMS(Property Management System), where as all the other Starwood property in that region used Delphi PMS. It was hard to communicate with other properties since they were using a different system. It took a lot of hassle, time and effort just to convert a simple data from their system to our system. In addition, lack of continuous training was also big conflict that we faced and arose very much in our property. Whenever a new employee was hired, appropriate tech application training session did not take place in any of the training session. Obviously, working efficiency of the new employee automatically declined.
Therefore, it is crucial and important to know how to implement and consider when using tech applications from the very beginning and throughout the operation.
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