The old adage “It’s easier to sell to an existing or previous customer than to a new customer” is probably most evident of all in the hospitality industry. If a hotel or guest house has a customer with a happy experience, it is infinitely easier to convince that customer to return than to try and find a new customer who has never been before. So how can you use this information to target your existing customer base for repeat business? The answer is to let Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software help you communicate with them. It’s all about keeping in touch. And an added bonus – you can also target new business at the same time.

Marketing Campaigns
The hotel marketing strategy should definitely incorporate CRM. There are various means of using cheap internet services to produce fancy graphical e-mails to target existing clients. However, used on their own, these do not form a structured marketing campaign. You need to be able to filter the data, for example, by region (town, county, country), by industry (for business clients – conferences, business lunches and the like), by customer profile (visitors for Christmas, Valentines’ Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day). One Dublin hotel that springs to mind actively targets wedding reception and honeymoon couples. Each anniversary they receive a very attractive offer in the post to entice them back for another stay or meal. Others use simple e-zines and newsletters sent monthly or bi-monthly – this keeps the brand fresh in the mind while also alerting the client to any special offers.

Maximise your occupancy
All hotels and guest houses know what it costs to turn a room. Using CRM, we can find out what guests have previously negiotiated lower rates. We can then target those individuals or businesses directly to maximise the occupancy in periods of low demand. As you only make the offer available to a carefully selected segment of your guests, you will not erode your price positioning or branding. It’s common sense, however, many hotels just don’t have the facilities to find this information. That’s where CRM is your friend!

Satisfaction Surveys
Once a customer has left, contact them by phone or e-mail for a short satisfaction survey. The survey should be short, but will quickly highlight any perceived deficiencies in service. But most importantly, you can record the responses in CRM, and use this for future marketing campaigns.