An Overview of Customer Relationship Management in Tourism

An Overview of Customer Relationship Management in Tourism:

Customer Relationship Management turns out to be a vital strategy for focusing organizations on the customers’ needs, higher service offerings, and customer satisfaction for a durable customer relationship that creates organizational profitability and sustainability. The advantages of implementing the right CRM system in a business offer organizations to provide differentiated services to customers. CRM in tourism helps the business process, services, and employees for the acquisition and retention of loyal customers by meeting individual needs and creating values. In the rest of this article, we are going to present you with an overview of customer relationship management in tourism.

Tourism Industry:

Tourism is meant for recreational, leisure, and business purposes. Tourism encompasses the activities of people traveling to and residing in places other than their usual environment for not exceeding a consecutive year for the purpose of leisure or business or other non-remunerating purposes. It plays a significant role for many nations due to the huge inflow of foreign exchange with the sale of goods and services which led to employment creation in the service industries related to tourism. The service industries include transportation services such as airlines, cruise ships and taxis, and hospitality services. Accommodation services include hotels, resorts, amusement parks, casinos, shopping malls, various music venues, and the theatre.

Tourism is a complex phenomenon that is extremely difficult to describe succinctly. Any tourism model must detain the constituents of the tourism system, along with the key processes and aftermaths that arise within tourism. These processes and outcomes include the very essence of tourism, the travel experience, and the supporting means by which tourism is made possible. Tourism is a multifaceted activity that considers many lives through different economic activities.

Socio-Economic Impact of Tourism:

Tourism has emerged as a key sector of the world economy and it has become a major employer of the workforce in global trade. It has been making a revolutionary and significant impact on the world economic scenario ever since the United Nations was formed in 1937. The multifaceted nature of this industry makes it a catalyst for economic development and helps a balanced regional development. It is realized that travel and tourism are two important instruments of sustainable human development, poverty alleviation, employment generation, and environmental regeneration thereby stimulating the provision of better infrastructure for developing nations. The tourism industry is thus facilitating in bringing both economic and social change at the local and national levels.

Customer Behavior and Tourism:

Customer behavior is essential to know the needs, purchase motives, and decision process associated with the consumption of tourism, the impact of the different effects of various promotional tactics, the possible perception of risk for tourism purchases, the different market segments based upon purchase behavior, and as to how managers can enhance the possibilities of achieving marketing success. Many variables influence the way consumption patterns differ. Patterns change based on the different products available and the way individuals learn to purchase tourism products. The tourism customer decision process as a system is made up of four basic elements:

1. Energizers of demand: These are the forces of motivation that lead a tourist to decide to visit an attraction or go on a holiday.
2. Effectors of demand: The customer develops ideas of a destination, product, or organization by a process of learning, attitudes, and associations from promotional messages and information. This affects the customer image and knowledge of a tourism product, thus serving to heighten or dampen the various energizers that lead to customer action.
3. Roles and decision-making process: The important role is that of the family members who are normally involved in the different stages of the purchase process and the final resolution of decisions about when, where, and how the group consumes the product.
4. Determinants of demand: In addition, the customer decision-making process for tourism is based on the determinants of demand. Even though the motivation for travel may exist, demand is filtered, constrained, or channeled due to economics (e.g. discretionary income, sociological reference groups, and cultural values or psychological factors perception of risk, personality, and attitudes).

Tourism is also an industry operating on a massively broad scale, it embraces activities ranging from the smallest seaside hotel to multinational hotel chains. The concept of tourism marketing is based on the process of identifying and anticipating customer demand for tourism products and services, developing a means of providing products, and services to fulfill these needs, and communicating this to the customer thereby motivating sales, and consequently satisfying both the customers and the objectives of organizations. Through comprehensive marketing planning and research and market segmentation, a tourism marketing mix can be formulated to achieve the organizational goals through strategic marketing. Successful members of the travel industry recognize that it is impossible to be all things to all people. One of the biggest mistakes any member of the industry can make is to view the travel market as homogenous and try to satisfy all travelers with any single product or service.

Features of Tourism Marketing:

Tourism marketing is a strategy that promotes various destinations, attractions, and services to potential tourists. The main objective of tourism marketing is to attract more visitors to a specific location, increase their length of stay, and encourage them to spend more money on local businesses. Here are some of the essential features of tourism marketing:

• Destination Branding: Destination branding is a critical component of tourism marketing. It involves creating a unique identity for a destination that differentiates it from its competitors. Destination branding includes creating a distinct visual identity, including logos, slogans, and colors that reflect the destination’s culture, heritage, and values. Effective destination branding can help to create a positive image for the location, making it more appealing to potential visitors.
• Target Audience: Successful tourism marketing requires a thorough understanding of the target audience. By understanding the needs, interests, and preferences of potential tourists, marketers can create tailored marketing messages that resonate with them. Marketers can segment the market based on demographics, psychographics, and behavioral characteristics to create targeted campaigns that are more effective at reaching the desired audience.
• Marketing Mix: The marketing mix is the set of tools that marketers use to promote their destinations. The four main elements of the marketing mix are product, price, promotion, and place. In tourism marketing, the product is the destination and the experiences it offers. The price refers to the cost of travel, accommodation, and other expenses associated with the trip. Promotion includes advertising, public relations, and other marketing activities aimed at raising awareness of the destination. Finally, place refers to the distribution channels that are used to reach potential visitors, such as travel agents, online booking platforms, and tourist information centers.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and engaging content to attract and retain a specific audience. In tourism marketing, content marketing can include creating blog posts, videos, social media posts, and other types of content that showcase the destination’s attractions, experiences, and culture. By creating high-quality content that resonates with potential visitors, tourism marketers can build trust and establish themselves as experts in their field.
• Digital Marketing: Digital marketing has become an essential tool for tourism marketers. Online channels, such as social media, search engines, and online travel agencies, have made it easier than ever for potential visitors to research and book their trips. Tourism marketers can use digital marketing to target specific audiences, measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, and reach potential visitors at various stages of the buying process.
• Partnership Marketing: Partnership marketing involves collaborating with other businesses or organizations to promote a destination. For example, a tourism board could partner with an airline or hotel chain to offer discounted packages to potential visitors. Partnership marketing can help to extend the reach of a marketing campaign, increase the visibility of the destination, and create mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses.
• Sustainable Tourism: Sustainable tourism is becoming an increasingly important consideration for tourism marketers. Sustainable tourism involves minimizing the negative impact of tourism on the environment, society, and economy while maximizing the benefits. Sustainable tourism practices can help to create a positive image for a destination, attract visitors who are interested in responsible travel, and support the local community.

Customer Relationship Management:

Customer relationship management (CRM) was coined in the early 1970s once the establishments have a manifestation that it should be judicious to become ‘customer centric’ rather than ‘product centric’. It is in this perspective, the birth of CRM was significant. Customer relationship management came as a method that handled relationships with customers surpassing the total business.

Features of CRM:

CRM is a strategy for attaining fineness in business by managing its customers and dealers in a well-organized manner. It is mainly constituted with the succeeding features:

• Customer Needs: The assumption of a customer’s needs is not effective, therefore knowing a customer’s likes and dislikes can ascertain the actual needs and prioritize them.
• Customer Response: Organizational dealing with customers’ queries intelligently for the best solutions can positively impact customer response. A minor misunderstanding can convey disparate perceptions and can fail in building emotional associations with the customers.
• Customer Satisfaction: It is the degree to which the needs and responses of the customers jointly deliver in surpassing customer expectations. This feature act as an elementary differentiator of organizational strategies. When higher customer satisfaction, there are more opportunities in the business leading to much stronger customer relationships.
• Customer Loyalty: It is the affinity of the highly satisfied customer to remain in a particular organization. This brings customers to re-visits the organization for business deals. Customer loyalty turns out to be an influencing facet of CRM for business success.
• Customer Retention: The process to keep existing customers without losing them to other establishments for business deals. A customer who turns out to be loyal has a high probability to retain.
• Customer Complaints: Complaint specifies the act of dissatisfaction of the customer for different reasons. Handling complaints to meet the ultimate customer gratification is crucial for any business. Hence, a predefined CRM process can manage complaints skillfully.
• Customer Service: The process of providing information and services related to products and brands. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the qualitative service delivered. When the quality and style of service exceed customer expectations, the business can gain good growth.

Importance of CRM:

Customer relationship management is not only the most efficient approach for relationship building but also build strong personal bonding. Hence, it would be easy for organizations to identify the actual customer needs. Many organizations have world-class tools for CRM systems such as BatchBook, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, Buzzstream, etc. The importance of CRM are listed as follows:

• A CRM system helps for correlating customers to foreknow the customer needs to increase business.
• CRM contains all the minute details of a customer, henceforth tracking a customer is easier.
• Through the CRM system, customers can be grouped on different aspects.
• CRM is beneficial in acquiring new customers by maintaining all relevant details in the system, also called as an ‘Opportunity of Business’. The sales team converts into a winning deal.
• It is very cost-effective and doesn’t require much manual work and resources.
• The centralized information in CRM provides better accessibility by lessening the processing time and heightening productivity.
• Competently can deal with the customers and that increases customer satisfaction, thereby improving turnover and profit.

In today’s thriving business environment, installing a fully equipped CRM system to fulfill business requirements.

Need for Relationship with Customers:

Distinctive customer relationship building is what an organization should focus on in the present market trends. The substantial outcomes of quality relationship building are:

• Enhanced Customer perceptiveness: When an organization lengthens to deal with the customer, a better understanding of the customer’s requirements and expectations is possible. This helps in developing a healthy relationship that results in more sales and helps in retaining customer business deals which leads to a profitable business.
• Customer Satisfaction: It acts as a basic differentiator of business strategies and an important performance exponent. More customer satisfaction leads to more business and strong bonding with customers.
• Customer Loyalty: This is generally seen when the customer is so much satisfied with the services of the organization and re-visits for more business deals.
• Customer Retention: When there exists a quality relationship between the customer and provider, he/she doesn’t prefer in taking a risk for a new product.
• Chances of getting referrals: When the customers are highly satisfied, there is always a possibility for cost-free backing by customers to provide referrals. This will help the suppliers as there is no cost and struggle involved in expanding the customer base.
• Growth in revenue: When there exists a healthy customer relationship in the organization, not only do customers turn out to be frequent buyers but also seek in buying special categories of allied products.
• Cost to serve is low: As the organization understands the buying behavior of the satisfied customer, the cost to serve becomes very less and they turn very less with complaints.

Orientation of Customers:

Orientation of customers defines the preferences of customers or areas of business in which the customers are conscious. The types of customers are discussed below:

• Cost-Oriented Customers: These kinds of customers focus on low-cost products and will compromise on effectiveness, performance, and quality. These customers have a high chance of losing as they blame the supplier when encountering a sudden problem. Hence suppliers must focus on strategies that can handle payment-related problems.
• Value-Oriented Customers: Value-oriented customers focus on efficient and high-performing products for a profitable deal in the long business run. These satisfied customers keep maintain a strong relationship with the organization.
• Technology-Oriented Customers: These kinds of customers pay attention to good quality and technological performance rather than the cost of the product. These customers have a zeal for innovation and technical aspects. They have an affinity for experimenting with new products or experiences and develop in making worthy relationships with organizations. Also, businesses have a high chance of getting referrals from same-nature customers.

Understanding the type of customers is vital before having a business deal with the customers and it will help the organization to opt for strategies in building relationships and transact accordingly.

Customer Acquisition:

Customer acquisition is the process of getting new customers or transforming the prevailing prospect into a new clientele. This practice is precisely concerned with matters such as acquisition at minimal cost, getting as many customers as possible, obtaining indigenous and business-oriented clients, getting customers opting for newer business networks, etc. For customer acquisition, the primary focus is on the psychology of customers, then concentrating on the external environment like the business culture, media, technology, etc. Examination of customer behavior and customer’s constraint of knowledge processing power in buying the product follows the process. Finally identifying the best strategies for convincing new customers and enhancing marketing campaigns.

Exploring new procedures to interest the customers is significant to remain in the competition. Acquiring a customer relay on how efficiently the business can build a strong customer and thereby increase the business profits. While acquiring, organizations must have prompt, responsive, and experienced employees in serving the customers. Customer acquisition is the prime challenge and therefore it is important to identify critical tactics to augment customer acquisition power. The best strategy for acquisition is by performing efficient and well-targeted promotional campaigns. Encouragement of customer referrals is another cost-free strategy advocacy. For effective economic growth of the organization, they should try in balancing the number of acquired customers with the number of customers lost.

Types of CRM:

Customers today are powerful and driving factors of any business. CRM is commonly categorized into four types based on the changes in customer portfolios, business operations, large data management, information distribution, procedures, and resources which are mentioned as follows:

Strategic CRM: Strategic CRM is focused on developing long-term relationships with customers that can be mutually beneficial to both the customer and the business. This type of CRM typically involves high-level planning and strategic decision-making. The goal is to create a comprehensive understanding of the customer and their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This information can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns and personalized services that address the specific needs of each customer. Strategic CRM includes the following elements:

• Customer orientation
• Processes configuration and integration
• Information management and technology incorporation
• Strategy implementation

Operational CRM: Operational CRM is focused on the day-to-day interactions between customers and the business. This type of CRM includes functions such as sales automation, marketing automation, and customer service management. The goal is to streamline and automate processes so that customers can receive faster and more efficient service. Operational CRM can also provide real-time data and analytics that can be used to make informed decisions about how to best serve customers. Operational CRM is composed of three main components, including:

a) Sales force automation covers all the functions in a sales cycle. It begins with storing customer data and ends with changing prospective customers into their business. This process covers customer tracking for repeated sales and promotions through organizing call centers, channels, sales, and marketing. Moreover, it averts duplication and automatically tracks contacts and follow-ups.

b) Marketing Automation capabilities with CRM creates repeated tasks like automated marketing emails or posting updates on social media making it more efficient. Also, it works on customer engagement through social media.

c) Service Automation focus on technology application of customer service through channels like email, phone, FAQs, knowledge bases, ticketing portals, etc. Service automation is beneficial to companies in enhancing customer experiences, service efficiency, and service productivity. These are mainly implemented in areas like information/help desks, call centers, contact areas, field service, and web service.

Collaborative CRM: Collaborative CRM is focused on integrating and sharing customer data and insights across different departments and functions within the business. This type of CRM involves collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer service teams to ensure that each department has a comprehensive understanding of the customer. The goal is to create a seamless customer experience across all touch points with the business.

Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM is focused on using data analytics and business intelligence to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This type of CRM involves collecting and analyzing large amounts of data from various sources, including social media, customer feedback, and sales data. The goal is to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities that can be used to improve customer engagement and drive business growth. Analytical CRM can also provide predictive analytics that can be used to anticipate customer needs and preferences.

CRM in Tourism Industry:

The tourism industry plays an important role in the economic development of a country. The selling of services or products in this sector makes it very challenging because of the features such as the intangibility of service, high involvement of the customer in production, time, and difficulty to maintain quality control and standards. Recent years have witnessed drastic development in the tourism industry and the competitive challenges in the future where the quality of the product is the driving force of any business. Determinants of quality are safety and security, accessibility, hygiene, transparency, harmony, and authenticity of tourism activity concerned with natural and human resources. CRM as a tool builds an innovative technology platform that offers an effective collection and sharing of customer information. Identifying the value of customers, more organizations are focusing on CRM. Utilization of CRM systems in the tourism business brings the following gains:

• Retain tourists’ history in the database using automated service.
• Astonish tourists with relevant and up-to-date service tactics.
• Understand trends and marketing information for tourism business enhancement.
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Faster web access to all partners and customer data from any place with any device.
• Analyze the efficiency of marketing campaigns.

The availability of differentiated products, high cost of customer acquisition, and availability of low switchover options raise customer expectations by breaking the existing customer loyalty, thereby necessitating the importance of CRM.

Customer Satisfaction in Tourism:

Like many other service industries, the tourism industry also in its formation, existence, and development, depends highly on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the complete psychological condition formed when the reaction to product/service expectations is compared with consumption experience. Five dimensions of service quality for determining the customer satisfaction of service delivery.

1. Reliability: It is the knack to accomplish assured services consistently and accurately.
2. Responsiveness: It is the readiness for assistance to customers and providing prompt service.
3. Assurance: It is not only the knowledge and courteousness of employees but also their skill to deliver trust and confidence in customers.
4. Empathy: The provision of being considerate and paying individualized attention to customers
5. Tangibles: The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials.

CRM Trends:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an essential component of modern business operations, and as such, it is subject to various trends that shape its development and evolution. Here, we are going to examine some of the most significant CRM trends that are currently shaping the industry.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) a Key Portion of CRM Systems: One of the most significant trends in CRM is the increasing use of AI and machine learning. AI technology is now being incorporated into CRM systems to automate routine tasks, such as data entry, customer profiling, and lead scoring. AI-powered chatbots are also becoming increasingly popular, allowing businesses to provide fast, responsive customer service around the clock.

AI technology can also help businesses to identify patterns in customer behavior and preferences, which can be used to inform marketing and sales strategies. For example, AI can analyze large data sets to identify which products or services are most popular among particular customer segments, which can help businesses to optimize their offerings and increase customer satisfaction.

2. Social CRM is Increasing: Social media has become an essential part of modern communication, and as such, it has also become an important channel for customer engagement. Social CRM involves using social media platforms to connect with customers and monitor their feedback, complaints, and requests. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are now commonly used by businesses to provide customer service, offer promotions, and build brand awareness.

Social CRM can be used to gather valuable insights into customer preferences, trends, and sentiment. Social media listening tools can be used to monitor brand mentions, identify influencers, and track customer feedback. This information can be used to inform marketing and sales strategies and improve customer engagement.

3. Voice and Conversational User Interfaces in CRM: Voice and conversational user interfaces (UI) are another trends that is gaining popularity in CRM. Voice-enabled devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are becoming increasingly common in households, and businesses are starting to develop applications that allow customers to interact with them through voice commands.

Voice and conversational UIs can be used to provide personalized service, such as making reservations, ordering products, and accessing account information. These interfaces can also be used to provide fast, responsive customer service, as customers can get answers to their questions without having to wait on hold or navigate through complex menus.

4. Companies are Automating Their Processes Using CRM: One of the most significant benefits of CRM systems is their ability to automate routine tasks and processes. Companies are increasingly relying on CRM systems to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Tasks such as data entry, lead scoring, and sales forecasting can now be automated, allowing sales and marketing teams to focus on more high-value activities, such as building relationships with customers and developing new products and services.
5. CRM is Interlinked with IoT Technologies: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology trend that involves connecting everyday objects to the Internet, allowing them to communicate with each other and with other devices. IoT technologies can be used in conjunction with CRM systems to gather data on customer behavior and preferences.

For example, IoT sensors can be used to track customer movement and behavior within a physical store or location. This data can be used to personalize marketing and sales efforts and improve the customer experience. Similarly, IoT technologies can be used to monitor customer use of products and services, which can be used to improve product design and service delivery.

6. Younger Generations are Assertive for CRM Use: Younger generations are becoming increasingly assertive when it comes to using CRM systems. Millennials and Generation Z grew up with technology, and they expect businesses to provide fast, responsive service through digital channels. As such, businesses are starting to invest in CRM systems that offer a seamless customer experience across multiple channels, including email, chat, social media, and mobile devices.

Younger generations also expect businesses to be transparent and accountable, and they are more likely to provide feedback and ratings on social media and review sites. As such, businesses are starting to prioritize customer experience and engagement to attract and retain younger customers.

7. Self-Service via CRM: Self-service has become an essential component of modern customer service, and CRM systems are enabling businesses to provide personalized self-service options for customers. Self-service portals and mobile apps allow customers to access their account information, view order history, and make purchases without the need for human intervention.

Self-service options not only improve customer satisfaction but also reduce the workload on customer service teams, allowing them to focus on more complex issues and high-value activities. CRM systems can also use AI and machine learning to provide personalized recommendations and support to customers based on their preferences and behavior.

8. Response Time: With the increasing use of digital channels for customer service, the response time has become a critical factor in customer satisfaction. Customers expect fast, responsive service, and businesses are investing in CRM systems that enable them to provide real-time support through various channels.

CRM systems can provide automated responses to common queries and issues, reducing wait times and improving the customer experience. AI-powered chatbots can also provide instant support to customers, allowing businesses to provide round-the-clock service without the need for human intervention.

9. Data Mining Will Gain Prominence: Data mining is the process of analyzing large data sets to identify patterns, trends, and insights that can be used to inform business strategies. With the increasing amount of data generated by CRM systems, data mining is becoming an essential tool for businesses to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Data mining can be used to identify which products or services are most popular among particular customer segments, which can help businesses to optimize their offerings and increase customer satisfaction. It can also be used to identify customer churn and take proactive measures to retain customers.

10. Cloud System and Mobile CRM: The cloud has revolutionized the way businesses operate, and CRM systems are no exception. Cloud-based CRM systems offer several benefits, including scalability, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility. Cloud-based CRM systems can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing businesses to provide real-time support and access customer data on the go.

Mobile CRM is also becoming increasingly popular, allowing sales and marketing teams to access customer data, update records, and manage leads from their mobile devices. Mobile CRM enables teams to be more productive and responsive, even when they are on the move.

In summary, CRM is constantly evolving, and businesses must stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive. AI, social media, voice and conversational UIs, automation, IoT, self-service, response time, data mining, cloud systems, and mobile CRM are just some of the trends that are shaping the future of CRM. By embracing these trends, businesses can improve customer engagement, increase efficiency, and drive growth.

A SWOT Analysis:

Strengths:

• Travel agents are moving from being mere ticket issuers to travel consultants taking complete responsibility for the customer’s needs. Tour operators even focus on meeting the fragmented travel requirements of the customers.
• CRM in travel agents and tour operators can help in focusing and finding more profitable customers.
• Travel agencies and tour operators besides portraying the country to the interested parties, also entice them for holidaying to a country with attractive packages.
• Through business intelligence, travel and tour operators can improve their knowledge about their potential travelers, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction.
• Establishments with suitable CRM systems can identify customer needs, thereby increasing the sales efficiency of the business

Weaknesses:

• Tour business when overloaded with unnecessary information makes it complicated and results in encountering difficulty in predicting customers’ travel decision-making.
• Undefined internal activities like coordination of tasks, employee productivity, process period, and cost and data quality can reverse the service benefits of travelers.
• New information about travelers alone cannot help CRM practices be successful, travel companies need to maintain more and more historical data otherwise tour companies end up wasting time and money.
• Travel companies are mostly burdened by taxes which makes it totally unrealistic for companies to endure the high costs.
• High operational cost is incurred by offering personalized services to the customers, which lead to low profitability.
• The business profitability of a customer lies in the long run of their relationship with the organization, where there are chances of losing customers mid-way.
• Fast technological up gradation may not always be possible for organizations to adapt operationally and economically.

Opportunities:

• With the increasing number of tourists, there is always a necessity for identifying their travel requirements and these prospects can be tapped by this segment.
• Online travel agencies have transformed the sector in a short span and contribute a major portion to global e-commerce. Provision of providing online services to customers can be advantage to their business. Traveler interaction can be improved with the new communication technologies that support CRM.
• Increases the sales base of the tour business as the current customers create profit in the future, therefore establishments should provide in including other related services.
• The awareness that high-tech technologies and software can cut operational costs without conceding on product quality and service.

Threats:

• As there is high use of communication technology and over-automation in CRM systems, it results in decreasing in personal interaction with travelers. Customers tend to prefer a direct and personal relationship with their providers which could hinder the business.
• Weaker collaboration of CRM technology with back office systems can reverse the CRM benefits like quicker feedback, continuous interactions, adaption, and supporting activity.
• Levitating customer expectations may result in losing their loyal travelers and in the future companies may not meet the growing expectations through promotions and gifts.
• Sometimes traveler reactions to CRM activities can inverse because of factors like inflation and thereby decreasing tourism business revenue.
• With the initiation of the internet and technology, the role of travel intermediaries is changing and the whole business faces a threat of destruction unless they amend to meet the need of tourists.
• The budgetary constraints due to the strained economic climate, travel services must innovate or face loss.

It is apparent that CRM rather than observing it as a sub-function of IT or marketing is now perceived as a fundamental business infrastructure that coordinates various departmental functions, Understanding customer decision-making is a cornerstone of tourism marketing strategy. The travel decision-making process involves complexity as it involves many elements that constitute a vacation itinerary some are raised well before the arrival and others are formed at the destination. Apart from the features like intangibility, perishability, inseparability, heterogeneity, and temporary ownership, the threatening challenge is to standardize the tourism services due to the performance variations during service delivery and variations in customer experience. Therefore, the quality of the product or service becomes the driving force in the competitive environment of the tourism business. Whereas the distinguishing nature of tourism marketing relies more on supply led unlike any other service is another trial. The considerable growth of customer expectations on the readiness of differentiated products and low switchover options could easily break customer loyalty towards an organization. Successful CRM implementation in the tourism business brings out astonishing gains to the organization.

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