MOBILE MARKETING IN THE

HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

mobile marketing

Realizing valuable customer interaction

By Michiel Veefkind, Willem Bleeker & Paul van Keulen

26-2-2010 1

ELEVATOR PITCH:

OUR BUSINESS IN 60 SECONDS

Trends

Problem

� Customer experience

� New ways of communication (personalized and cross-media)

� Continuous customer service improvement

� The hospitality business is traditional in approaching customers

� There are no direct customer feedback systems and little personalized information

Solution

� Mobile marketing system with feedback function, using SMS messages as a starting point, followed by smart phone applications

Value creation

� For hotels: direct interaction with their customers and customer service. Customer loyalty will be improved.

� For customers: better understanding of their needs, instantly better service and personalized information about hotel and city.

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CONFLICT OF TRENDS AND ACTUAL

SITUATION IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

� Very traditional way of communication with customers (only booking process is digitalized)

� Identifying customer

Hospitality industry

� Personalized communication

◦ Cross-media

◦ Social media

� Continuous customer service improvement key

Trends in the market

� Identifying customer satisfaction is costly and time consuming, because it is all done in hard-copy

� No real time service improvement possible with current system

service improvement key issue for long term growth and profitability

� Customer experience is a key marketing issue

“It is just a matter of time before new technologies will be used in the

hospitality market”

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SOME PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

OF OUR SYSTEM� Welcoming to the city

� Last minute room changes

� Conference delays

� Reminders of: payment, bookings and check in times � Reminders of: payment, bookings and check in times

� Package up sells & offers

� Restaurant menus

� Information requests (matches, cinema, sightseeing)

� Feedback questionnaires in order to improve customer service

“Target specific guests at specific times with specific messages”

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ADDED VALUE AS A RESULT OF OUR OFFERING FOR

THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY AND CONSUMERS

Consumer perspectiveBusiness perspective

� Better understanding of consumers’ needs

� Instantly better service

� Right information at the right time

� Providing an interactive communication platform, which will result in:

◦Direct interaction with customer

◦Complete customer service overview

◦ Improvement of customer ◦ Improvement of customer services

◦Higher sales via up selling and marketing of extra services

Improved customer service & higher sales

Happy customer

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E-commerce manager of the Hotel Management Group: “The business idea of

PMW Marketing addresses perfectly what hotels miss at the moment”

OUR BUSINESS MODEL; 75% OF

REVENUE FROM LICENSING THE SYSTEM

� We will receive a license fee of the hotels which will use

our system

� We will use freelance consultants to train the hotel

managers in direct marketing and/or hospitalitymanagers in direct marketing and/or hospitality

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Licensing fee Consulting fee

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

� Direct digital marketing

� E-mail, websites and mobile services

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QUESTIONS & REMARKS

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Appendix 1: An example of customer

feedback via SMS

� An example of direct feedback in a South-

African restaurant

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APPENDIX 2: OUR SYSTEM IN

DETAIL

Customers sends sms

System receives SMS

Data processed and

stored

Feedback stored

ReportFeedback process

Overview of reports

Message to manager

Customer sends SMS

Information process

System receives SMS

Matching database

SMS to customer with

information

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APPENDIX 3; OUR STRENGTH: THE SCALABILITY OF OUR BUSINESS,

OUR WEAKNESS: WE DO NOT HAVE THE TECHNICAL SKILLS INHOUSE

Strengths Weaknesses

� Scalability of the business is very large

� High growth market

� Addressing a real gap in the market

� Customers are easy to find

� No technical knowledge in-house

� Most hotels are part of large groups (e.g.

Hilton, Accor, Best Western, etcetera) so

probably sales needs to be on executive

level

� People might regard direct marketing as

Opportunities Threats

� People might regard direct marketing as

spam

� Traditional market; lots of opportunities to improve current customer service and experience

� No real-time communication systems in place

� High-growth potential

� In near future: smart phone applications

� Possibility to incorporate our business in existing hotel ERP systems, such as Hotelconcepts

� Business can easily be extended in other service providing markets

� Traditional market, difficult to convince

hotel managers of the need for new

technology

� Large companies in the US have a similar

business and might introduce their

system in Europe

� CRM providers might copy our idea

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