Customer Loyalty Influence On The Hospitality Industry

In the past there have been many theories and findings put forward on the above.

Developing a loyalty program is challenging. You team must understand what will keep your current customers interested and what will spark them to purchase multiple times.

Over the decades there were tremendous amount of challenges for every business. Customers have more knowledge, they have more options, and they have higher expectations. Customers are more informed with the humungous development in technology. Having more options in front of them, expectations has surpassed in retail industry. Loyalty is a customer having faith that your organization’s product or services offered is the best for them. It is the process of tapping the buying pattern of customers in a store based on their preferences. Customer loyalty is significant because it is economical to retain the old customers rather than acquiring new customers. So, organizations employ loyalty programs which reward customers for their repeat business.

Healthcare organizations want to leave a positive influence with their patients. Leaving a positive influence on the patients will make them want to return to your health care facility in the future and utilize your services. A healthcare organization needs to build loyalty within their patients. “Reflecting a broader trend in business metrics, healthcare organizations are increasingly building customer loyalty (in their case, patient loyalty measures) into their existing satisfaction surveys (Blizzard, 2002).” A customers’/patients’ loyalty is very essential when it comes down to describing a health care organization’s outcomes for their financial means. Actually, health care organizations that are not observant to loyalty could possibly endanger

According Baker M (2000), loyalty schemes is the “Overt attempt of exchanging partnership to build a long term relationship association, characterised by purposeful co-operation and mutual dependence on the development of social, as well as structural bonds with consumer”.

Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.

Hilton Hotels is one of the biggest players in the hospitality industry with over 2900 (as of September 2007) hotels worldwide consisting of numerous brands and products. The hospitality industry is service centered and highly competitive. The challenge for Hilton is to create and deliver value better than its competitors. Hilton understand that it is important to improve customer experience and build strong relationships with the customers. Hilton Hotels adopted a Customer Really Matter (CRM) strategy out of necessity to cater for

The corporate branded hotels’ market penetration was also supported by the loyalty programme machinery. The frequent-stay programme grew by 12% in guest enrolment in 2003 according to a research conducted by the Market Matrix. Such programmes could potentially double the rate of returning guests. Even though not all major brands adopted this approach, its existence made it tougher to change consumer behaviours and prevent any new market entrants to present themselves as reasonable viable product substitutes for a major part of the penetrated market share. Coincidentally, a group with a larger number of properties would also provide a bigger option pool and accessibility for guests to maximise their returns through such programmes. Although John Scott deemed such an initiative as irrelevant to Rosewood’s course, this marketing strategy would still present itself as another level of

Hospitality Management is a difficult and competitive market, and any lack in customer service can result in defecting customers or the termination of a relationship between a customer and a service provider. In this paper we will look at Hilton a company that has continually ranked amongst the top ranking hotels and continues to improve. Hilton’s customer service ranks as one of the top hospitality providers in the United States. We will look at the history of how Hilton came to be the name brand it is today and some of their process the used to narrow the customer service gaps such as Hilton Honors, the Hiltons Reservation Customer Care, and RESMAX. We will look at how they look at how Hilton manages the customer expectations through the use of employee training and their decreased the customer service gap through employee retention. We will also look as how Hilton co-partnered with Citibank in order to offer its Hilton Honors member additional benefits in order to keep in line with the customer service that the customers have come to expect.

* Customer loyalty program. The company secured a high level of customer loyalty due to its membership program and its general approach to customizing services to the needs of every customers.

Customer loyalty is the key objective of customer relationship. Loyalty only occurs when there is a positive attitude to a brand perceived to be different. The individual market segments should be targeted in terms of developing customer loyalty. Loyalty is not just repeat buying but also involves the attitudes of customers to a brand. When a customer feels that the product or service was highly satisfying they develop loyalty. If they do not feel as if the product and service was not satisfying there might negative effects.

There are no studies which touched on the topic of “loyalty” to hotel brand in Riyadh City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but there are some studies which had discussed the “loyalty” to a brand in other production sectors. For example, the study of (Salh, 2010 ) as it aimed to study the psychological and social factors and its effect on loyalty of mobiles’ buyers to the brand as the study concluded that there is relation between the psychological and social factors of user and mobile brand. The study of (Hasen, 2017) aimed to know the factors which lead to prefer a specific brand and concluded that there are several factors of preference of a specific brand such as quality, price, specifications and mental image of the brand. The study of (Al-Zabi, 2013 ) strived to examine the effect of concepts relevant to the nature of purchasing decisions, mechanism to make these decisions, methods of its evaluation, explain the types reference groups which affect purchasing decision of consumer of automotive goods and identify the types of effect (informative and standard) and degree of their effect on purchasing decision of consumer of automotive goods. The study of (Al-Khusroom, 2011 ) aimed to know the effect of perceived difference and perceived quality of on consumer’s loyalty to a brand. The study concluded that there is big effect of perceived difference which is created by brand in consumer’s mind in his loyalty towards this brand. Also, the perception of

From a customer’s point of view, loyalty programs are a means to purchase goods at cheaper prices.

The term “Brand Loyalty” also called as “Customer Loyalty” has been in the business industry since a very long time as a model to be used in conducting business. But it wasn’t until the mid to late 1900’s that the term was actually given its due importance by making it a vital part of advertising and marketing. The concept of marketing evolved substantially from being focused on sales of a product to having Customer satisfaction to be its focal point. Studies further revealed that there was a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and Brand Loyalty.

A similar research Loyalty in Retail: A strategic success or a management failure states that successful loyalty programs do not exist in vacuum. The loyalty cards provided by the retailers are compared to the hammer. Just as a hammer does not build a house, a loyalty card does not build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty has been used as a strategic approach in increasing customer value and thus providing a good customer experience but it doesn’t work alone. A brand value has to be created in which involvement of the staff, quality of the products, knowledge about the customers etc. are required.