Customer Relationship Management Strategies in Hospitality Industry of the UK

Abstract

This proposal is based on the analysis of customer relationship management strategies in the Hospitality sectors of UK. Moreover, the literature review has been analysed the factors like change in customer demand, technological innovation and shortage of skilled labour in the sector. The proposal has described the research philosophy, strategy, approaches and data collection methods. A timeline and contingency plan have been given to show the estimated time and risks.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. 3

2. Rationale for the research. 3

3. The objectives and scope of the research. 4

4. Literature review.. 5

5. Methodology. 8

5.1. Research philosophy, approaches and design. 8

5.2. Main data collection and analysis techniques. 9

6. Expected outcomes. 9

7. Timeline for completion. 10

References. 12

Appendix. 13

1. Introduction

Customer relationship management is one of the most important factors in management. However, in the hospitality sector customer relationships can improve the effectiveness of employees and marketers for the development of the organisation. Moreover, it can be said that with the help of customer relationship management different other factors like employability skills factors affecting customer demands and changing context of the market would be able to be analysed (Radii and Gunlu, 2016). Therefore, with the help of the proposed research, effectiveness of Customer management strategies to improve the condition of the hospitality sector would be analysed in the context of the UK. Moreover, the proposed research would improve the understanding of the customer relationship strategies with the perspective of employees and executives in the industry.

2. Rationale for the research

 Figure 1: revenue of hotel business in UK during 2017-2025

Source: (statista.com, 2022)

Hospitality sector is a growing business province in the Akin 2019 the hospitality sector of the UK earned revenue of 19.33 billion in US dollars (statista.com, 2022). On the contrary, in 2020 the revenue was 11.2 billion dollars, which was a rapid decline. That due to Brexit, the UK hotel forecast not only was also affected and was not able to maintain its consistency. However, changing trends and demands always challenge the hospitality industry (hospitalitynet.org, 2022). As a result, hotels in the UK always face challenges from the changing situations.

Figure 2: growth of hotel business in UK

Source: (hospitalitynet.org, 2022)

The instability of the hospitality sector requires better performance from the hotels and other existing organisations in the service. Therefore demand for customer relationship analysis, better customer relationship management, technological innovation and skilled labors are required (Kanga, 2017). In this research, factors associated with better customer relationship management and development of hotel performance would be described.

The research would evaluate the factors related to changing demands among customers, importance of technological innovation and need of skilled laborers in the hospitality sector of the UK for better understanding and appropriate strategy development.

3. The objectives and scope of the research

Research aim

The aim of the research is to analyse different CRM strategies to improve the condition of the hospitality industry of the UK by analysing the changing customer demands, technological and regular innovation and shortage of skilled labors.

Research questions

The research would be based on the following questions;

• How does the analysis of changing customer demand improve theCRM strategies in the UK hospitality industry?
• What are the effects of technological and regular innovation in the development of the UK hospitality industry?
• How can the hospitality industry of the UK reduce challenges due to lack of skilled laborers?

Research objectives

Objectives for the research would be as follows,

• To analyse the effect of CRM strategies while addressing changing customer demands for improvement of UK’s hospitality industry
• To evaluate the effects of technological and regular innovation in the development of hospitality industry of UK
• To analyse the measures taken by the UK hospitality industry for reducing the challenges related to lack of skilled labour.

4. Literature review

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management is based on the relationship marketing principle, which can improve different key areas of the modern marketing sector (Kanga, 2017). CRM can be improved with the help of the company’s philosophy, strategy and technological development. With the help of customer, oriented culture and better hotel performances profitability can be enhanced to retain the consumers (Kazandzhieva, Ilieva and Filipova, 2017). Different business strategic approaches such as B2B and B2C can be improved with the long and short-term goal setting through customer relationship management. Therefore, it can be said that relationship management for customers would improve organizational values and behavioral orientation of both consumer and marketer.

Changing customer demands

Hospitality industry is changing day by day and due to the covid affected the revenues and preferences have been changed drastically. After the pandemic situation, hospitality industry earnings remain 70% lesser than the pre pandemic level (Ons.gov.uk, 2022). During the spring 2020 the earnings of the UK’s hospitality industry in both drinking and eating-places were lowest, however after 2021 it became better. The performance within the hospitality sector was changing due to the low profit ratio. Now the customers are more focused on safety behaviours over luxury (deloitte.com, 2022). Due to the shift of paradigm, customers are more in charge of digital amenities like streaming entertainment video conference payment apps and virtual reality (Radii and Gnu, 2016). In addition to that, the hospitality sector was struggling to be in the market during the lockdown period.

Innovation in technological sectors of hospitality industry

Booking system and website innovations are some of the effective interventions to improve UK hospitality management. Both small and big businesses emphasize inventory management (Seta, Chaudhry and Srivastava, 2020). Sites like Trip Advisor are focusing on the feedback system for better establishment of the hospitality sector. On the other hand, social media analytics were used by the companies to increase the number of footfalls in the restaurant and different hotels. Special offers and complementary packages are given to the online websites and payment applications to increase the profit and revenue of hospitality sector organisations (Kazandzhieva, Ilieva and Filipova, 2017). Therefore, most of the hotels and hospitality organisations are focusing on robots virtual reality alternation of rooms integrated applications and touch fewer actions.

Labour and employees management in the hotel industry

The UK hospitality sector is struggling with backend job positions due to different external environmental factors like pandemic and Brexit. For example, Domino’s Pizza in the UK is trying to appoint 5000 delivery drivers and chefs for its 1100 stores due to increased demand of online delivery business (businesschief.eu, 2022). After the lock down period, the demand has increased in a terrific way so that the hospitality industry is suffering from nearly 200000 vacant positions during the Christmas period in the hospitality firms.

Figure 3: types of skill gaps in UK hotel industry

Source: (statista.com, 2022)

According to a report of statistics, the United Kingdom is suffering from shortage of skill in the vacancy of hotel and restaurant in 22% of organisations. Therefore, the hospitality sector of the UK requires a more diverse workforce with skills and knowledge (deloitte.com, 2022). On the other hand, it can be said that due to the increased number of migrant workers skill gaps could be observed more prominently (hospitalitynet.org, 2022).

Theoretical perspective

Customer engagement behaviours can be defined as the behaviour or interaction, which are beyond transactions. With this behaviour, the brand or the form focuses on motivation, drivers, and intention of purchase among the customers (Radii and Kazak, 2017). With the help of customer engagement behaviour analysis and initiatives, customer experience measurement can be possible.

Customer Engagement marketing theory: This theory analyses that deliberate efforts from the perspective of organisation to motivate and empower the customers would help to improve the contribution of marketing functions (Radii and Kozak, 2017). Therefore, marketing research and practices in business can make a shift in customer relationship management towards a positive way (Pansari and Kumar, 2018). Transfer of control from organisations to customers would be easier and it would benefit the business of hospitality organisations.

SERVICE-DOMINANT LOGIC: According to this logic, an organizational executive can improve the potential value with the core creators so that customers, suppliers, firms and associated communities can be included in the development of the hospitality sector (Giannopoulos et al., 2020). With the help of this logic, the UK hotel industry can improve its value with mainstream management of customer relations.

5. Methodology

5.1. Research philosophy, approaches and design

Positivism philosophy: Positivism philosophies define based on the Fireman and real observation, which can lead to calculation and measurement. Data collection and interpretation in positivism are objective. With the help of positivism philosophy, the research can get structured data with identification of main issues in the reference of research objectives. Kangu (2017) also adopted positivism research philosophy for the analysis of CRM in the hotel industry with the focus of different dimensions and marketing capabilities along with hotel performance. Therefore, it can be said that positivism research philosophy would be appropriate for this proposed research.

Deductive approach: From the three types of main research approaches such as inductive, deductive and inductive, the researchers would adopt deductive approach because it would help to improve the analysis of primary data. Deductive research approach helps to analyse the possible causal relationship between the variables and the objectives. Therefore, the possibility to measure concepts in a quantitative way would be higher in the deductive research approach. As a result, the possibility for generalized research finding would be better in the deductive research approach. Akintunde and Akaighe (2016) used deductive research approach for computing numerical data and better analysis of different variables with the reference of research objectives.

Descriptive design: In the proposed research, the researchers will identify the issues and relationship between the objectives and variables with the help of descriptive research design. The descriptive research design can analyse the characteristics of research data and classify the individual issues with the reference of objectives. Both primary and secondary data collection methods can be adopted with the benefits of proper implementation in research variables. As a result, descriptive research design might be effective for the development of better research structure for this proposed research paper on customer relationship in the UK hotel industry.

Mixed methodology would be chosen for the analysis of customer relationship factors in the hotel industry of the UK. Therefore, both primary and secondary data would be included in the research method.

Researchers would conduct a survey and thematic analysis therefore both qualitative and quantitative data would be included in this research.

A cross sectional study would be conducted so that it would be able to collect the data at one point of time only. With the help of cross-sectional study, the effect of customer relationship management strategy on customers and the hotel industry would be analysed with the perspective of hotel industry executives.

 5.2. Main data collection and analysis techniques

Data collection

Both primary and secondary data would be collected in this proposed research. Firstly, the primary data would be collected from mid and senior level executives of different hotels in the UK. They would be connected through to email-ids and would be sent Google form questionnaires for surveys. It is expected that 50 responses would be considered as the collected data for the survey with the help of random sampling. On the other hand, secondary data should be collected from Google scholar database and five journals would be included in thematic analysis.

Analysis

The quantitative data would be analysed with the help of graphs and charts and the secondary data would be analysed with developed themes.

6. Expected outcomes

It is expected that the research would analyse factors related to hospitality sector such as customer relationship change in customer demand effect of technological innovation and lack of shortage of skilled employees full stop with the help of proper analysis and identification of key factors the survey and thematic analysis would be able to describe the research objectives and topics properly. Moreover, the result would show that the effectiveness of organisations to understand the change in customer demand would help to improve its position in the hospitality sector. In addition to that, it can be expected that the employees would support technological innovation as a key factor for hospitality sector development.

With the help of this research, supportive policymaking can be improved and effectiveness of operational management would be enhanced. Moreover, this research would help to improve the understanding about technical factors and employee retention factors in the hospitality sector along with management of customer relationships.

7. Timeline for completion

Timetable

The research work will be conducted in summer after calculating all the breaks and holidays. The researchers will analyse the practical issues like leaves and other commitments during making the timetable. The primary data collection will be included 2 to 3 weeks in July. Therefore, within October 2022, the research paper would be submitted (refer appendix).

Figure 4:  Timeline

Source: (Self-created)

Contingency plan 

Issues	In which stage, the issues would be observed?	Immediate action plan	Long term action
Time  Constraint	Data collection and analysis	Creating the questionnaires and collecting Gmail ID as soon as possibleCollecting the literature before submission so that lecturer or guide can be consulted	Analysis of data would be properly executed after identification of research variables with the help of lecturer or guideCollecting more number of contacts so that data gathering would not be an issuePlanning of data collection and analysis as per the holidays and offs before starting dissertation submission paper.
Resources constraints	Literature review and data analysis	Collecting the literature as much as possible for or double checking by the professor	Making a draft of literature review and thematic analysis before the submission
Lack of skills	Data collection, analysis and giving justification of research topic	Consulting with mentorTaking online coursesCommunicating with other friends	Reading academic resourcesTaking inputs from seniors