https://www.rikon.ie

A Framework for Customer-Relationship Management Capability in the Irish Hotel Industry.

Project team: Dr. Denis Harrington ([email protected]), Dr. Patrick Lynch ([email protected]), Dr. Anthony Foley ([email protected])

This project is funded by Fáilte Ireland’s Applied Research Scheme. It has a lead time of 12 months, and commenced in January 2012.

The Project Aim

One dominant theme that continuously appears to emerge from National and European reports is that, in order for Irish Hotels to surmount the detrimental effects of lost competitiveness, emphasis must be directed at developing and infusing key managerial capabilities to support their customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. Convergent evidence from multiple disciplines has clearly demonstrated that effective CRM has a positive effect on customer retention, loyalty, profitability, which leads to the creation of competitive advantage for organisations. Due to overcapacity in the Irish Hotel sector, the value of these managerial capabilities as a required element of recovery to the industry has been acknowledged at a national strategic level. It has been established that the hotel sector needs to achieve an employee-centric perspective and that the realisation of this perspective involves building managerial capability in this area. This project will evaluate and establish the managerial capabilities required to support CRM in Irish hotels.

Methods

The research design involves the application of a major international study on best practice on CRM capabilities within the hotel industry culminating in the publication and presentation of a report to the National Tourism Development Agency, Fáilte Ireland.

Engagement Activity

This project has significant engagement with international hotel schools and with Fáilte Ireland and has the support of the IHF which is the key player informing the strategic direction of the critical hotels sector, and an important repository of data sources relating to the industry. Fáilte Ireland is a major source of information and insight into Irish tourism and hospitality and the project will build on existing knowledge bases within the national tourism agency.

Impact

This project is truly innovative as it represents an industry/academic collaborative initiative to address critical industry challenges and deliver measurable impacts to tourism firms. The CRM framework developed will facilitate the distillation of key management capabilities that allow for enhanced revenue-making by Irish hotels.

RIKON 2013