Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Practices in the Hotel Sector from the Perspective of Leisure Travelers

Maduka Udunuwara, Dale Sanders and Hugh Wilkins

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) is widely discussed in numerous industries including the hotel sector. Much of the discussions on CRM have focused on implementations related aspects with only scant attention given to the CRM practices that manifest due to CRM implementations. As a result while the existing understanding on CRM has been established through an organisations point of view by identifying the back stage CRM from the point of view of the organisation, this study demonstrates the importance to enhance the understating of CRM through the customers’ point of view. Thus this study explored CRM practices experienced by the leisure travellers in the hotel context and what they think of such practices. Data was collected through focus groups which consisted of 22 participants in total.  The findings indicated numerous customer relationship management practices experienced by leisure travellers at the:  pre-encounter, encounter and post-encounter stages.

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Hotels, Leisure Travel