CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PRACTICES OF HOTELS: A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED STAR HOTELS IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

The new concept in these years brought a dramatic change in acquiring the variety seeking customers and the ever churn clients – Customer relationship management. CRM is emerging as the core marketing activity for businesses operating in fiercely competitive environments. Specifically in services sector the role of this concept is very essential to make customers acquaintance with the business for long. That is why the researcher was highly attracted to do in this topic. The purpose of this study was to know the practice of CRM in hotel industry for maintaining sustainable satisfaction and customer loyalty with reference to selected star hotels in Addis Ababa. The scope of this research is delimited to the current practice pattern of CRM components and their effect on satisfaction and loyalty. So, the impact of CRM on revenue and profitability of the hotels are not included under this research. The data was collected from both the managers and the guests who minimally stay in the rooms of the hotels. So, the respondents are selected using stratified sampling technique. In order to gather the relevant data, two hundred sample questionnaires and sixteen structured interviews were administered. One hundred fifty six of them were accepted and used as a valid base for the data analysis. And the collected data were classified, analyzed, and interpreted with the help of SPSS. And the result of the study shows that star hotels in Addis Ababa have a good trend of technology implementation. However, the emphasis given for people and business process aspect is low. Finally, with the current level of technology, process and people implementation, the hotels attain considerable degree of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The relationship between CRM components and loyalty was also reflected by using person correlation matrix.