Readings CIDCM

Hilton Hotels: Brand Differentiation through Customer Relationship

 2002 Hilton launched a CRM (“Customers Really Matter”) strategy, which was focused on improving service delivery consistently across the family of Hilton brands.
 After rapidly expanding since 1919, starting 1964 Hilton started diversifying their business by expanding into casinos and vacation ownership.
 2005 Hilton bought back Hilton International and kept expanding
 “We need scale and breadth to be the first choice of the world’s traveler. WE want enough distinct product at different price points in order to be considered by guests across the full spectrum of segments and reasons for travelling.”
 Hilton OnQ:
 Implementation of a consistent IT infrastructure to enable the brand promise.
 Collecting customer data, preferences, and likings across all properties of Hilton to ensure fast, effective and excelling customer relationship management.
 Hilton did not bill owners of hotels for their technology implementation. Technology is there to reduce their costs and improve their revenues. “We all share the goal of driving profitability”
 OnQ as critical component of aggressive expansion strategy.
 OnQ stimulates cross-selling and managing customer relations at all touchpoints (before/during/after)
 Fostering a relationship with the customer throughout their lifecycle with ONE system for all properties helping recognition of customer needs and personalization of service.
 Consistent delivery of CRM.
 Weaknesses of OnQ:
 Loss of flexibility due to pre-allocation of rooms to most valuable customers
 Hard to measure results (ROI). Can only measure reduction of customer-service interaction time, number of captured e-mail addresses
 Costly strategy
 The guest cycle with OnQ:
 Online profile created by customers on voluntary basis  detection of