engleski

The best CRM practice in hospitality in Croatia

The paper aims to research the application of CRM's quality business practice in the Croatian hospitality industry. The reason why this topic is being researched is a continued growth of the hospitality industry in Croatia and worldwide. In Croatia tourism represents the key economic sector. The factors such as addition on personal income, more free time and the customers' desire to experience as much as possible while travelling are significantly influencing and changing the hospitality industry. This means that the application of CRM in hospitality is becoming ever more demanding and challenging. This paper used qualitative analysis so as to research the application of CRM in one of Croatia's leading hospitality companies. The applied case analysis used a specific example in order to analyse the application of CRM's quality business practice. The paper focuses on analytical and operative challenges in CRM, for example how to collect useful information out of all the numerous contact points which appear between customers and companies, how to make sense of them and use them in the best possible way. In accordance with the above mentioned, the focus is on the possibility of a successful and efficient customer segmentation, determining the offer which satisfies the customers' needs the most, as well as on determining the customers' value and applying the collected knowledge about the customers in order to increase their value. The results of this research exhibit a successful application of CRM in hospitality, and as such they might be interesting and useful to researchers whose area of interest is CRM in general and especially CRM in the hospitality industry. Furthermore, the paper might be interesting to managers and practitioners who through a proper implementation of CRM want to segment their customers according to their value and, finally, increase the value of their customers. The limitation of this paper is the limited experience in the implementation of CRM within one company and a display of the business practice within one market.

customer relationship management, hospitality industry, customer service, customer value

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