Implementing Customer Relationship Management in the Hotel Sector: Does 'IT' Always Matter?

Travellers are becoming more price sensitive, less brand loyal and more sophisticated. To enhance guest loyalty, hotels must focus on developing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies that aim to seek, gather, store and share guest information throughout the entire organisation for creating personalised, unique guests experiences. Although CRM in the hospitality industry has been defined by the myriad of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) suppliers that highlight and overstate the importance of ICT capabilities and tools, it is now being widely recognized that successful CRM strategies should effectively combine and align ICT functionality with business operations and strategy. As a widely accepted framework to achieve this has not so far been developed, this paper proposed a model for managing and integrating ICT capabilities into CRM strategies. The model argues that successful CRM implementation requires the management and alignment of three managerial areas: ICT, relationship (internal and external) and knowledge management. The model is applicable and useful for all industries, but by gathering data from a dataset of hotels in Greece, its validity is tested while interesting contextual findings regarding CRM implementation are revealed. Suggestions for future research are also provided.