HILTON HOTELS: BRAND

DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH CUSTOMER

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

HILTON HOTELS BACKGROUND

Founded in 1919 with the Mobley
Hotel in Cisco, Texas
Founder- Conrad Hilton
1946- It went public as Hilton Hotels
Corporation, with a portfolio of 15
properties in 11 states
1964-Diversified into Casinos and
Vacation Ownership.
2000-Acquired Promus Hotel
Corporation, which took Hiltons Close
to 1700 properties marks.
Global Workforce-1,00,000
2002-Launched customer Really Matter
(CRM) strategy
2006-Hilton announced the opening of
1000th hotel in North America and its
presence in 78 countries.

Challenges in Global Lodging Business

2008-Set an aggressive goal of
another 1000 hotels in North
America and 1000 hotels in
rest of the world.
Challenges faced were :
Highly Capital Intensive
High levels of employee
turnover
Difficulty achieving
standardization across all its
hotels.

Hilton OnQ
What's an OnQ?
The Brain child of Tim Harvey(CIO and EVP of shared service at Hilton) and his team built on the premise that
technology was an enabler for employees to deliver great customer service
OnQ was a central system which was a comprehensive and integrated IT infrastructure designed to support
property level operations of each hotel in Hilton family.
It embodied both one stop shopping nature of an integrated solution and readiness to serve customers On Cue .

Cost Structure
Initial estimate of $93 m, Actual cost- $102 m

What was the necessity for OnQ?

Critical component of Hiltons aggressive

expansion strategy, which firm could leverage
enabling it to open more hotel ,at quicker pace.
OnQ played a principal role in enacting the
brand promise.
It Would act as a competitive advantage which
would take years for competitors to replicate.

The OnQ platform and Guest cycle.

CRM:- Customer Really Matters

Benefits for Hilton Hotels

Solidify Relationship with customer

Consolidate Far flung data

Arrival Report
Holistic view about the customer
Service Recovery

Financial benefits

Reduce Talk Time

Cross Sell

Other long term benefits

Data collection to measure results

Sample Arrival Report

Guest Category

Important Columns

Diamond

Svc Recovery Action

Gold

Re-imbursement Information

Silver

Personalized Message

Blue

Number of times customer has stayed on other

national and international properties

4+

Hilton Brand Positioning

Delivering the Customers Really Matter Promise:

Producing the Hilton experience starts much earlier than check in.
Data Flow Diagram:

Key Points
QnQ reservations allows the agents to access clients data and update their
preferences. This information shortens the time on the phone and it enables
better services
Once report lists and ranks all the expected guests that had profile in QnQ,
then they assign the Rooms based on their preferences.
This report also helps to provide better services to people who had
difficulties in the past.
Hilton tries to speed up the process by recognizing the guests at the
reservations center.
Gold and Diamond level members also had excessive benefits through
MyWay Program.
SALT( satisfaction and loyalty tracking) survey which was key component
of CRM initiative is used to measure the overall experience, ability to
recommend, willing to return

The Competitive Brandscape

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: INTEGRATION
Same Technology Platform and Distribution Footprint throughout all
brands
Avoiding Complacency
First multi-brand operator to roll out strong, integrated customer relationship
management effort
Marriot hotel-2004-Siebel Systems off-the-shelf software: Consolidating
customer data for easy access by call center and property-level employees
Starwood, Hyatt and InterContinental: Frequent guest programs to build
relationships with high-value customers

The future of CRM

From an electronic point of view CRM has been successful
Reduced talk time on phone
Maintained more direct relationships with guests
Difficulty -- Effectiveness at the front desk to create a personalized
interaction
Focus on measurement, executive championship, employee training &
empowerment
Blackstone acquisition offered opportunity to decide whether the CRM
initiative was worth reinvesting or not.

Recommendations
Hilton should create a unique stay experience that cannot be imitated
by other chains. In order to do that, every hotel management should
invest in its employees by training them on how to make customers
feel that they are treated special.
Should offer a clearly understandable referral bonus program to
its loyal customers. A loyal guest can earn extra points because
of referring Hilton to other qualified prospective customers.