Hotels nowadays thrive on customer loyalty and relationships. Repeated customers, as well as potential clients, are one of the factors hotels consider the most important these days. To support this goal, hotels need a reliable system that will help them connect deeply with their customers and attends to their needs and interests. That’s where the hotel CRM software comes in place.
With various CRM software available in the market, it is challenging for a hotel to identify which one would perfectly fit their property. In this blog, we will help you identify all the necessary aspects you need to consider in choosing the right CRM software.
What is a Hotel CRM Software?
A hotel CRM software, or Customer Relationship Management software, is a system that manages and nurture business relationships with guests. It is considered as a powerful support for hotels. Ideally, the hotel’s CRM software is the main storage of guest’s information and preferences during their stay.
Its functionalities are created to help hotels take full advantage of guest’s data by having access to their stay history, customer loyalty, and campaign conversions, as well as know more of their guests’ behavioral aspects during a staycation.
Before choosing the seamless CRM software for a particular hotel, hoteliers must know first the main functionalities of a preferred CRM software for hotels.
Metasphere's CRM Software
Loyalty Management Process
CRM helps hotels build connections with customers, thus, results in customer loyalty and retention which then ensures profitability and revenue to the hotel. One open secret to a lasting hotel-guest relationship is to make your guests feel that your hotel is their second home. Customer recognition is more important now to maintain customer loyalty. Creating rewards, incentivize guest’s points, awarding loyal customers with additional benefits entice them to patronize your hotel.
Basically, these initiatives give a feeling of importance to the guests and uplift their emotions by making them feel acknowledged. And who will not like to return to a place which provides you a homey experience? I guess most of us, if not everyone!
Guest Segmentation and Nurturing
One functionality that helps to differentiate your guests based on their interests is guest segmentation.
Guest segmentation is a process of identifying a broad database and dividing them into a more specified market.
Through guest segmentation, your hotel’s entire customer database can be segmented into different stages or groups and narrowed down for a more targeted approach for your campaigns.
This process helps the hotels know more of its market segments and better fulfill the needs and wants of their guests. It can also tailor personalized marketing campaigns and helps the hotel meet their guests’ expectations better.
Using the pre-defined segments, the CRM software can identify preferred touchpoints, deliver a hyper-personalized and engaging approach throughout the guest journey. This is where the CRM can help the hotel nurture the guest’s experience just by knowing and understanding their interests.
Comprehensive Reporting
Hotel CRM Reporting is essential in every hotel as it provides tangible information that helps in monitoring the progress of each marketing campaign or activity towards its customers. These reports are usually available on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis and cover sales, campaigns, and customer reporting.
Member’s reports include stay history, points statement, contribution to revenue per member, and etc. Loyalty program reports show the improvement of the loyalty program over a certain period such as no. of members and enrolments, total revenue accumulated, no. of room nights booked by the loyalty members, retention rate, and etc.
These reports are beneficial to monitor the development towards the hotel’s goals and quickly identify possible problems affecting customer loyalty. It also helps the marketing team to track campaign performances and measure ROI which is a challenging task for marketers.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Hotel CRM Software
Having a CRM software in a hotel business affects the overall operation of the hotel. Before implementing a CRM software in your hotel, we have listed a few pros and cons to consider.
Advantages of CRM for Hotels
A scalable solution that helps in the growth of the hotel and meets everyone’s expectations
Puts everything in one place with a centralized system used to collect data where everyone can have access to
Allows data mining and collect specific reports and other analytics
Speeds up conversion process by using guest’s data and interests to come through the sales funnel
Lowers organization’s overall daily costs due to centralized data and increase in productivity
Disadvantages of a CRM for Hotels
Threat in security issues due to having centralized storage for data
Eliminates human interaction between guests and employees
Technical support usually comes at an additional cost for the hotels
Mishandling of database can easily result in loss of data
Getting used to the new framework is sometimes challenging for employees
Important Things You Need to Know About a Hotel CRM Software
Being in the hospitality industry, the needs of the guests come first in every hotel operation. Understanding guests, attending to their needs, making them feel at home, usually results in returning guests. But the service should not start and end inside the hotel premises. One of the best ways to provide personalized service to customers wherever they are is through CRM.
Based on an articled post by The Restaurant Times, CRM or Customer Relationship Management is considered as one of the top technological trends that drives the hospitality industry in Dubai.
Hotel Tech Report mentioned on their site that whatever industry you are in, there are few important things your CRM software needs to do in order to achieve its purpose.
Tracks multiple communication channels – With a lot of different channels used to communicate to guests nowadays, your CRM must be able to adapt to and track all kinds of communication channels. Be it when the guest receives an email campaign, face-to-face communication was in place, or an SMS has been sent out. Tracking these communication channels is important to keep the communication open between the guests and the hotel.
Automated – A CRM software must be implemented to ease the operations in the hotel. Mundane tasks which can be automated by the CRM could help improve productivity on hotel operations.
Within the budget – Before implementing a CRM software, make sure that a budget is set to avail the software. It should help the hotel succeed and not the other way around.
Secure – Your guest’s privacy is your hotel’s priority. A data breach would lose the guest’s trust and the hotel’s credibility. Make sure to find a company that ensures data security.
Mobile – Make sure to keep connected with your CRM software anytime, anywhere. A CRM software should not only be accessible on a desktop but mobile-optimized too.
Great Hotel CRM: Conclusion
By putting CRM software in place on hotels, it helps build an ample guest profile that could create a proper hotel-guest interaction. Providing a hyper-personalized approach to every guest interaction from pre-stay to actual stay and post-stay, makes guests feel at ease with the hotel thus entices them to come back again.
Choosing a fit software for a hotel, the CRM software can act as a support for every department from front-end teams such as sales, marketing, and front office to back-office teams such as housekeeping and finance. CRM software is a tool that adds a personal touch to guest services hence makes the guests feel special during their stay.
Now that you know a bit more about CRM software and how it would benefit your hotel, it could be the right time to consider implementing one on your property.
If you are still hesitant to do so, we at Metasphere Technologies Inc. are willing to discuss further with you and provide more information or clarification for you to help with your decision-making.
Let’s nurture your guests and build loyalty with Metasphere's CRM solution. Schedule a demo or contact us directly today for a free consultation.
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About Metasphere Technologies Inc.,
Metasphere Technologies Inc. has helped hotels to stay globally competitive for over 15 years through its market-leading product portfolio of solutions built on I.T. technologies in process management, business intelligence and service-oriented architecture. Click here to learn more about Metasphere products.
Metasphere Technologies Inc. has a team of talented professionals based across the world, including USA, China, United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. The company's solutions are installed in leading hotel chains and multinational enterprises worldwide.
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