Hotel's Customer Relationship Management Research Based On The Customer Lifetime Value

Customer's role as an important asset has become more and more distinct. In the "customer-oriented" service industry especially, its significance is just like the enterprise's lifeline. For hotel industry, the prominent presentative of service industry, to implement customer relationship management is both a big trend and an external must.The present focal point of hotel's customer relationship management is how hotels enhance customer perceived value. In practice, the value transfer between customers and hotels should be bidirectional and balanceable. Only if hotels find their own valuable customers, can the value transfer go on. Therefore, hotel's customer relationship management doesn't mean treating all customers equally without differentiation, but distributing resources and developing relationship according to the different values brought by various customers.This paper starts with the detailed review of literature on customer relationship management and customer lifetime value and introduces the application actuality in hotel's customer relationship management. It suggests hotels should first do customer segmentation scientifically if they would like to implement CRM effectively, and the standard of segmentation is just the customer lifetime value. Then the paper takes into account the different consumption characteristics between hotel's direct customers and agents, constructs a set of hotel's customer lifetime value evaluation system separately to meet the hotels' need on CRM, and it decides indicators' weights through a survey among fourteen hoteliers who are responsible for CRM in Xiamen four-star and five-star hotels. Next, the paper proposes how to calculate the present value and potential value of hotel customers by these two sets of evaluation system, and accordingly segment and position customers. Finally, the paper refers to Xiamen International Seaside Hotel's management practice and Business Relationship and Operational Standard between Hotels and Travel Agents in America, then proposes pertinent hotels' CRM tactics.This paper's research object is Xiamen four-star and five-star hotels. And it decides indicators' weights by improved AHP, aims at establishing a set of customer lifetime value evaluation system which is workable and suitable for hotel industry. The proposed planar customer segmentation method is more scientific. All these have certain guiding significances for hotels' CRM practice.