PHOENIX, AZ— The Pointe South Mountain Resort here is known for its personalized customer service. So when the four-diamond property— part of the Destination Hotels & Resorts portfolio— was looking to embrace customer relationship management (CRM) technology, the ability to personalize marketing and promotional efforts to lure return guests was crucial to the system’s functionality. “Embracing a customer intimacy value proposition is our discipline,” said Andre Fournier, director of sales/marketing at the property. To achieve this, the 640-suite Pointe South Mountain turned to the IDT Group and since last September has been using its Web Concierge CRM system, he said. The CRM system interfaces with the hotel’s property management system (PMS) and is able to pull specific guest data that it can then turn around in the form of specialized marketing campaigns, he said. “We have been using the Web Concierge program. It captures the profiles of our guests and every time someone checks into the hotel, a TILE [or profile]is created. We take these profiles and then have a guest history with their preferences,” Fournier said. The system even spans the entire property— from the spa to the restaurant to the golf course, he added. Knowing where the guest was and what services he or she used enables Pointe South Mountain to then design a customized approach to encourage the guest to come back, Fournier said. “We created a special anniversary mailing. It was mailed 60 days prior to the year anniversary [from when the guest stayed at the hotel]and offered customized promotions based on the family’s habits from the last time they stayed here,” he said. Because Pointe South Mountain’s Web Concierge CRM system is tied to its PMS, the solution permeates across its reservation system, which allows the hotel to not only take room reservations, but also book other services throughout the property including golf tee times and spa appointments, Fournier said. Before embracing the new Web-based system, the property used a manual process to input the guest data and would then print out guest history reports in an attempt to offer some level of personalized service, Fournier said. “This technology greatly enhanced the process that was already in place. What it does for marketing is create an ROI. It also reduced marketing costs,” he said, adding the system eliminated the creation of “useless promotions.” The next step is to use the system for better guest recognition at the front desk so that when a guest returns, the hotel can offer a free breakfast or a discount towards one of the hotel’s services upon check-in, Fournier said. “We want to give them something for coming back and we want it to be based on their past experience,” he said. As a result of the success Pointe South Mountain Resort is having with the CRM system, Destination is considering deploying the technology across some of its other properties, Fournier said.
