Cooperative Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Alpine Tourist Destinations

Internet technology is a major enabler for collaboration in customer-oriented processes; in this case a corporate CRM infrastructure for tourist destinations. Besides this crucial technological driver, the need for an increased customer-orientation in marketing activities through the utilization of knowledge about customers forces a change in marketing communications. This adaptation is required in a context of increased competition among tourist destinations and augmented problems of smalland medium tourism enterprises (SMTE) in handling customer-oriented processes in an electronic environment. By implementing a cooperative CRM initiative, a lacking motivation to cooperate of SMTE and technical interoperability of existing information systems, have to be considered as impedimental factors. Cooperation in CRM between tourism organizations and service providers requires coordination on strategy, processes and systems. In the current model of collaboration in marketing campaigns, the service providers and the destination management organization determine a common understanding about the strategic objectives and their roles in the destination network. From a process perspective, it is defined how the involved actors are planning, executing and analyzing marketing campaigns. These processes are supported by an inter-organizational CRM infrastructure, consisting of analytical, operational and collaborative system components.