Table Of Contents. 1. Hotel Loyalty Loyalty Club Members Habits e-crm in Hospitality Today Know Your Customer...

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2 Table Of Contents 1. Hotel Loyalty Loyalty Club Members Habits e-crm in Hospitality Today Know Your Customer Personalization Customer Support More Efficient Marketing Customer Loyalty...11 ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 1

3 1. HOTEL LOYALTY Hotels get nearly half of their revenues from the small segment of travelers who spend about a month each year on the road: frequent visitors make up only 10 percent of all hotel guests but account for 44 percent of hotel nights (Exhibit 1). In the early 1980s, hotel chains began to recognize the value of such customers by introducing loyalty programs patterned on the airlines' frequent-flier model. These programs have succeeded in maintaining the loyalty of people who travel moderately often (spending 6 to 22 nights a year in hotels) but are not as effective as they might be with other segments, our research suggests. In general, frequent travelers belong to more than one program, spend less than half of their nights on the road in their favorite chains, and spread the rest around to other establishments (Exhibit 2). Light travelers those who stay in hotels only a few times a year have yet to build up points in any one loyalty program, so the advantages of always staying with the same chain are low. Hotels can court both groups in at least two ways: by learning more about them and by adapting loyalty programs to suit their tastes and needs. The frequent-traveler segment represents $40 billion to $50 billion in revenues each year. These guests spend some of that money in their preferred hotel chains, but their wandering ways leave $22 billion to $27 billion in play. Persuading such people to narrow the field from three or more chains to their favorite two could add seven to ten nights at the chain they prefer. To capture this opportunity, hotel executives must ask, "What do you get the person who has everything or at least more points than he or she can use?" Part of the answer might involve changing the way points are redeemed. Even for elite-status members of a loyalty program, redeeming them for free hotel rooms can be cumbersome at popular times and destinations. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 2

4 To complicate matters, hotel chains have partnered with other companies to offer alternative rewards, such as airline miles. But partners must be paid, and these redemptions are a real expense to hotels. Hotel chains can make their loyalty programs more attractive by simplifying the redemption process and by making their most desirable properties more available. To persuade these popular hotels to accept more redemptions, parent companies should offer strong incentives, including remuneration close to full room rates during peak periods. Chains should limit the number of their reward partnerships in order to control costs and retain as much money as possible. Hotel operators should also search for innovative ways to distinguish programs from those of the competition and to make them more appealing to frequent travelers. Free meals aren't much of an incentive to anyone on an expense account. Instead, these customers want their rewards to be personalized with things that matter to them: benefits such as upgrades to concierge floors or offerings (including free movies or minibar items) not covered by their expense policies. Moreover, some guests may be planning special events (such as weddings, honeymoons, vacations, or large parties) that could not only serve as the focus of innovative rewards programs but also use up lots of points if hotels were aware of them. In fact, a hotel can learn a good deal by conducting a better dialogue with its guests and by giving frontline staff members an incentive to note their observations. Someone who uses a credit card affiliated with a frequent-flier program or another hotel chain, for example, is clearly worth courting. Chains should also review their loyalty programs' status tiers, which often ignore the needs of customers at either end of the guest spectrum. New members who show signs of becoming heavy users (those with a sudden increase in hotel stays within a chain, for example) should be offered tangible, easily attained incentives to lock them into the hotel's program. At the other extreme, many programs max out at around 50 or 75 nights a year, while frequent customers can easily log twice that. Incentives and status levels should be recalibrated to keep the interest of these sought-after guests, to reduce their proclivity to play the field, and to raise the cost of switching. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 3

5 2. LOYALTY CLUB MEMBERS HABITS The percentage of all guests who indicated club membership is "very important" when selecting their most recent hotel stay increased steadily throughout 2003 with a 25-percent annual increase. Features such as points transfer and instant redemption combined with no blackout dates and no point expiration are making it faster and easier for members to redeem points Frequent travelers (15 or more room nights per year) are four times more likely to consider club membership very important when selecting a hotel. Frequent travelers represent more than 50 percent of all room nights sold in the United States Among frequent travelers, club members have considerably higher incomes, pay slightly more per room night, stay more nights per year in hotels and are more tolerant of price increases compared with nonmember hotel guests The average profile of a frequent traveler who joins a loyalty program is a 47-year-old male traveling on business. He stays 31 nights per year in hotels, is very brand loyal, pays an average of $103 per night (but would pay another $11 before switching brands) and has an annual income of $104,000 Loyalty-program members are much more likely to make their reservations online than nonmembers. Loyalty-club members use the Internet 43 percent of the time to make their hotel reservations. Nonmembers go online 32 percent of the time to book their hotel rooms Fifty-nine percent of loyalty-club members use the hotel's or brand's Web site to make their online reservations. Nonmembers use these Web sites only 27 percent of the time ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 4

6 3. E-CRM IN HOSPITALITY TODAY Electronic customer relationship management (e-crm), in the context of the exploding Internet distribution and marketing in hospitality, is a business strategy supported by Web technologies, allowing hoteliers to engage customers in strong, personalized and mutually beneficial interactive relationships, increase conversions and sell more efficiently. e-crm cannot exist in isolation Today's multi-channel marketing model requires a single brand image to be communicated across all channels. In the same time it requires interactive customer relationships to be established and maintained across all channels. The hotel website has become the first point of contact with the overwhelming majority of hotel customers. This year 75% of North Americans will research travel online and 42 million will book travel online (TIA). Leisure Travelers look for area attractions and family accommodations. Business Travelers look for directions and high speed Internet. Meeting Planners look for function room floor plans and capacity charts. Anytime an Internet user lands on a hotel website, a branding interaction occurs. This branding interaction can be positive (brand-building) or negative (brand-eroding). Unfortunately for some hoteliers on many occasions a visit to the hotel website turns out to be the last point of contact with this particular customer. Two key questions are facing hoteliers today: Who owns the customer in this new online environment? The online intermediary, which made the booking, or the hotel where the guest stayed? How can hoteliers establish mutually beneficial interactive relationships with the customers in order to increase repeat business, boost revenues, and retain loyalty? Here are the main aspects in e-crm in hospitality: 1. Know Your Customer 2. Customer Service 3. Personalization 4. More Efficient Marketing 5. Building Customer Loyalty ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 5

7 1. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER Knowing your website visitors is an extremely important consideration when conceptualizing and designing your hotel website and your e-crm strategy. After all, addressing your key audiences and providing them with relevant information is one of the key aspects of any hospitality site. Different customer segments should easily identify areas on the site that speak to them. Internet users visit a hotel website not as John Smith or Jane Smith, but as a Business Traveler, Meeting Planner, Special Event Planner, Family Traveler, Spa Services Seeker, Golf Outing Seeker, Vacation Planner, Convention Attendee, Wedding Planner, etc. If you do not speak to each of these audiences, you will lose most of them to your competition. It is a matter of perspective on what is truly important to the customer. Different characteristics of the property can appeal to different customer segments. For example, to the business traveler, choosing a hotel may be influenced by the availability of a function room, high-speed Internet access or proximity to an area corporation, while a leisure traveler may find the same hotel a great location for local area attractions; same hotel, same destination, different purpose. Case Study: Who Are Your Online Customers? The 2004 RUSH Report, a joint effort by Hospitality ebusiness Strategies and iperceptions, based on nearly 40,000 customer survey respondents on 30 major brand hospitality websites, shows that 56 % of all visitors on hotel branded websites are Leisure Travelers and 32% are Business Travelers. Approximately 3% of hotel website visitors are involved in meeting or event planning. Understanding why online travelers visit your web site is of ultimate importance. Are they coming to make reservations? Compare rates with a third-party site? Seek directions to the hotel? Or are they looking for the hotel's phone number? Our study shows 34% of all visitors on hotel branded web sites seek information about the hotel, while 30% of the visitors come to make or change a reservation. 23% are people that visit the site to research/compare rates. A very important question is the creation of a Single View Customer Database. Is your guest data from POS, PMS, CRS, call center and Web channeled into a single database? Many major brands have invested millions of dollars to achieve single view of customers regardless of sales channel. The benefits are obvious: Identify your most valuable customers with best lifetime value perspective (20:80 principle) Allows guest-centric data mining: guest history, guest profiles, past bookings, preferences, etc. Enables informed decisions in real time Allows fast response times Real-time Guest Lifetime Value Deliver business insight to executives, marketers, sales 2. PERSONALIZATION Personalization is more than providing the right information to the right person at the right time. Personalizing the customer experience on the hotel website is a powerful conversion and retention tool. Customizing your interaction with your most valuable customers (those 20% that generate 80% of your business) will provide significant long-term rewards. Personalization on the property level should start by identifying all electronic touch points with your customers (hotel guests, meeting planners, travel professionals, etc) and creating an action plan. Personalize all electronic communications with your customers. Adopt a policy on how to address your guests via (first name only, Mr/Mrs +Last Name, etc). Addressing the customer segmentation issues on the property website is a logical next step. Creating a targeted marketing campaign is another good step. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 6

8 For the major hotel brands, the personalization efforts are much more complex and expensive. Customization tools used by some major brands and airlines allow website users to actively personalize their website experiences using over 250 criteria. Here are some of the efforts by the major travel and hospitality companies to make the user experience more personable: Personalization agents using a variety of customization applications, capable of creating Behavioral Profiles and a Real-time profile for each customer Collaborative filtering: Using preference matrix and artificial intelligence to capture and predict customer interests Decision-support applications utilizing various applications for Behavioral Profiling, Predictive Modeling, Collaborative Filtering and Click-Stream Analysis, capable to sense the purchasing behavior and patterns of the user. By providing a customized booking experience these applications can boost the conversion rates. 2. CUSTOMER SUPPORT It is important to understand that customer service is only one aspect of e-crm and is primarily a reactive function aiming to improve performance and efficiency, while e-crm as a whole is a proactive long-term strategy. On the Internet the customer support aspect of e-crm is an extremely important trust building and customer retention tool. A well positioned Contact Us or Help button or Push-to-talk feature speaks volumes about the hotel brand ("They care about us") and builds trust. 57% of online shoppers actively seek sites with good customer service (2003 emarketer Survey) A review of the top major hotel brands shows that only Hilton uses "live agent" or "push-to-talk" functionality. Expedia and Travelocity do not use this functionality as of yet. Feedback from hoteliers that have installed "push-to-talk" functionality for over 24 months now, shows that consumers rarely use this feature. We believe that just the existence of this functionality plays an important role to provide additional peace of mind for the customer. Only 50% of those searching travel online actually make their bookings online (Jupiter, PhoCusWright, and HeBS). The other 50% look online, but book offline, due to privacy issues, security concerns, purchasing habits, or need to speak with a live agent to finalize the travel booking, etc. Therefore a hotel website should take extra steps to accommodate these 50% of the potential bookers by providing online help desks, live agents, push-to-talk features, very visible numbers, TTY phone numbers, etc. Case Study: e-crm Comp Analysis of 9 major upscale hotel brands. HeBS uses its proprietary CyberScore system to evaluate various aspects of 9 upscale hotel brands. HeBS addresses e-crm features and functionalities considered essential for optimum customer experience, such as customer support, ease of use and visibility of customer support throughout the site, customer support by phone and , personalization, "Self-service" Customer Service Tools (FAQs, interactive maps and business locators, etc), "Live" Customer Service Tools, corporate and property level help desks and contact info. Evaluated were a total of 9 e-crm features. The maximum score is 90 (9 features, 10 points each): ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 7

9 Conrad (Hilton) ranked first with 80 out of 90 points (89% utilization of best practices), followed by Westin (67 points and 74%) and Intercontinental Hotels with 65 points and 72%. In fourth place is JW Marriott with 59 points (66%), followed by Hyatt (54 points and 60%), Four Seasons (47 points and 52%), and Ritz Carlton (46 points and 51%). Le Meridien (37 points and 41%) and Mandarin Oriental (33 points and 37%) scored last. As the Case Study represents, all hotel brands have room for improvement in all of the evaluated e-crm areas. Customer support in the Internet age relies on a wide range of tools and techniques: Web Self-Service Tools: Intelligent service channel management and natural language search engines, directing customer requests to most appropriate support information and services; FAQs; Ask the experts self-service chat rooms, interactive maps and directions and business locators, etc. Live Service Tools: Push-to-talk functionality and real-time interaction with live agent; instant messaging and chat-room type of assistance; Voice-over-Internet Protocols (VOIP) applications; automation to pre-screen live support (selective approach) E-Mal Service Tools: Inbound management; automated response systems, capable of automating 80%-90% of volume with 98% accuracy, and dramatically improving service and reducing support staff by up to 40%. 4. MORE EFFICIENT MARKETING emarketing plays a crucial role in establishing interactive relationships with your customers. emarketing is a marketing strategy that uses the Internet as its medium. This includes display ads (e.g. traditional banners), keyword search, classifieds, marketing, referrals and sponsorships, etc. The main issues facing emarketers in hospitality today are: Guest profiling and one-to-one marketing. Accurate segmentation: focused segmentation equals higher response rates Create narrow-focused marketing campaigns Utilizing lifestyle data and personal preferences in the marketing Building opt-in lists and precision marketing (fivefold higher response rates) Internal benchmark of customer lifetime value Cross-selling opportunities Campaign tracking and ROI analysis Developing a robust and effective emarketing strategy requires not only an extensive knowledge of your customers and precise customer segmentation, shifting marketing finds from offline to online channels, but deciding what your marketing objectives are. emarketing can be successfully used as a direct response vehicle (short-term, results-oriented) or as a branding tool (long-term and strategic goals). Here is a quick review of the four most popular emarketing formats: Display Ads (e.g. Traditional Banners): Steady decline: 2003: 21% (as percentage of total online advertising spend); 2002: 29%; 2001: 36%; 2000:50% (PWC/IAB). Click-through rate 0.83% in Feb 2003 (emarketer) Keyword Search (e.g. PPC, paid-inclusion, etc): Steady increase: 2003: 35%; 2002: 15%; 2001: 4%; 2000: 1%. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 8

10 Classifieds: increased usage of this format: 2003: 17%; 2002: 15%; 2001: 16%; 2000:7%. Marketing: Currently between 3%-4% of total spend; Jupiter Research reports that US marketing spending will rise from $2.1 billion in 2003 to $6.1 billion in Case Study: Independent Hotel in Napa Valley This boutique 100-room hotel opened in the fall of The hotel launched an aggressive Direct Online Distribution and Marketing Strategy. The hotel website has comprehensive e-crm features, including userfriendly navigation, tons of useful information, customer support section, self-service tools and trust-building functionality, free promotion to entice people to sign up for the monthly e-newsletter. The website won a major industry award as the best hotel website in the U.S. in Results: Within 6 months the hotel opt-in list grew to 10,000 recipients. The hotel performs highly targeted and PPC marketing campaigns. The website has indeed become the first point of contact - over 50% of bookings come via the hotel website. 5. CUSTOMER LOYALTY True loyalty on the Internet is difficult to achieve your competition is just a click away. Loyalty Programs of the major hotel brands provide a crucial competitive advantage over online discounters and intermediaries who do not have such programs. Loyalty programs are very popular with online travelers, and especially with people who book online. Forrester reports than in 2002 over 80% of Online Bookers belong to some kind of a travel loyalty program, and more than 60% to a supplier-sponsored one. Here are the most obvious benefits of a well-functioning loyalty program in hospitality: Identify your most loyal customers Market to your most loyal customers Accumulate guest-centric customer intelligence Optimize Lifetime Guest Value And yet hoteliers do not need just any customer loyalty. A low-attachment loyalty (e.g. inertia loyalty, price loyalty) can bring only limited results. Hoteliers should strive to achieve a true Premium Loyalty (i.e. emotional or brand loyalty), which is characterized by high level of attachment and repeat purchases. This is the ultimate loyalty valued most by companies. The 2004 RUSH Report findings show that 50.9% of all visitors on hotel branded web sites identify themselves as members of a hotel brand Loyalty Program. 49.1% are not members, and some of them claim that they would consider becoming members of a hotel Loyalty Program, or would be interested to learn more. These 49% of visitors are up for grabs and available to any proactive hotel brand. Offering a well functioning, easy to understand and manage, and well presented Loyalty Program on a site is an important step in that direction. What would make online consumers return to the site? Existing customers are not only less costly to retain, but they also respond 4-5 times more readily than new customers to promotions and campaigns. The overall customer satisfaction with the hotel website is indicative about the retention capability of a website. The 2004 RUSH Report finds that website visitors are neither very satisfied nor dissatisfied with their overall experience on the hotel brand website. Less than 19% of visitors characterize their experience as Excellent, while almost 17% report that they are not satisfied and qualify the experience as Fair or Poor. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 9

11 Overall Site Satisfaction: How would you rate your website experience overall? (based on a sub-set of 34,533 respondents from 28 hotel websites) Excellent 18.80% Very good 35.73% Good 28.94% Fair 12.22% Poor 4.31% Total: 100% Different customer segments perceive the hotel website differently. While not dramatically different, Business Travelers appeared slightly more critical than other user groups. More Business Travelers rated the hotel sites as Fair or Poor than Leisure Travelers, 16.79% to 16.25%. Even when they felt satisfied, Business Travelers appeared more critical: 54.57% found the site to be Very good or excellent compared to 55.14% for Leisure Travelers. Conclusion: e-crm is an integral part of online distribution and marketing in hospitality. The Internet provides the best direct means to reach existing and potential customers. Establishing interactive relationships with your customers, which is the essence of e-crm, will help you retain your customers, increase revenues, and build brand loyalty. ITC Infotech Limited Confidential Page 10