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Benefits and Challenges of using Customer Data for Marketing your Hotel

Today in the hotel industry using customer data is key to the marketing strategy as it assists in building customer loyalty and enhancing productivity.  The use of customer data enables hotels to personalise experiences for their guests, introduce better hotel pricing and revenue strategies and expand their customer database.

Key benefits of using customer data in the hotel industry are:

• Improves Revenue Management – Yield management, business intelligence, and forecasting
• Improves Targeted Marketing - Revolutionising market segmentation, enabling marketers to micro-target their consumers
• Improves Customer Service - Evaluation of trends in the customer experience and preferences assists in improving the overall customer journey
• Mobile data - With the increase in the use of mobile devices it enables hotels to develop user-friendly apps and offer personalised services to their guests
• Harnessing Social Media – engage and connect with audiences on an international and national level on multiple platforms
• Analyse Competitors - offers market intelligence on our competitors - gives you a clear indication of what they are doing in the market.
• Increases overall sales for the hotel.

There are many tools now available to assist hotels with customer data management and maximising marketing campaign results, customer data platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook analytics, and CRM platforms such as Revinate (manages email marketing, customer relationship management tools).

In today’s digital landscape it cannot be denied that marketing is a challenging endeavour and especially in the hotel industry.  We have seen the benefits of customer data however there are challenges of customer data such as privacy concerns, maintenance, security demands, and data usage restrictions, and input of bad data.

Challenges of using Customer Data to the Hotel Industry

• Failure to maximise the use of guest data – hotels obtain a large amount of guest data however unless the right tools are implemented followed by the correct processes data will not be used correctly. 
• Lack of Resources – high turnover of staff resulting in a lack of knowledge and skills to use customer data platforms correctly resulting in incomplete and bad data being produced.
• Compliance with Customer Data regulations and Customer Data Security – Marketers face regulations on customer data breach such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that must be complied with or the business be faced with high legal costs
• Maintaining accountability with customers – if the customer data is not collected and used in the correct manner this can have significant consequences damaging the reputation of the business and losing the trust of the customer. 

How to overcome the challenges of using Customer data

• Investment in the right CRM tools maximising the use of your guest data
• Ongoing training of your employees on the use of the CRM tools in place
• Listen to your customers; ask them what their preferences are and give them the option of opting in and out of your activities.
• Train employees on the regulatory and corporate rules regarding the use of customer data.
• Remind customers about the value they receive by sharing their data – by sharing their data customers can avail of special discount offers via email marketing campaigns.

There is no doubt that using customer data in this ever-changing digital world is crucial to the success of a hotel's overall business.  However, as marketers, we must be prudent about the challenges we face today and mitigate these challenges in order to maximise the benefits of using customer data for marketing and assist with making our business a success!

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Written by Ailbhe Stephens

Minkara, O. and Minkara, O., 2022. Using Customer Data for Marketing: The Good, Bad & Ugly. [online] Aberdeen Strategy & Research. Available at: <https://www.aberdeen.com/cmo-essentials/good-bad-ugly-using-customer-data-for-marketing/> [Accessed 5 March 2022].

2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbntimes.com/technology/benefits-and-challenges-of-customer-analytics> [Accessed 5 March 2022].