Abstract
Irish hotels face many challenges: a rapidly increased bed capacity, poor ‘value for money’, and the global economic decline (IHF, 2009). In addition, hotel guests have heightened expectations of the quality of their experiences, and are expressing their opinions through travel sites like tripadvisor.com. This reinforces the need articulated in national strategy to enhance the business capability of Irish tourism firms (Fáilte Ireland, 2004; Irish Tourism Policy Review Group, 2003) and, in particular, the impetus for Irish hoteliers to establish and maintain meaningful and durable guest relationships.
Customer Relationship Management (henceforth CRM) represents the organisation’s ability to create and maintain profit maximising relationships with its customers (Zablah et al., 2004). Indeed, CRM is crucial for increasing visitor loyalty (Sigala, 2005). However, not all CRM programmes have succeeded (Bolton, 2004), which may be due to an over-reliance on technology (Campbell, 2003; Reinartz et al., 2004). This paper proposes the Resource-Based View (henceforth RBV) viewpoint (Barney, 1991; Wernefelt, 1984), as a theoretical perspective to address the failures of CRM. The RBV links company actions directly to performance (Harmsen and Jensen, 2004) and can support Irish hotels in implementing CRM more effectively.
The RBV sees the firm as a collection of unique resource and capability pools that, if utilised in a distinctive way, can be employed to create and preserve competitive advantage (Osarenkhoe, 2008). However, whilst recognising RBV’s potential as a strategic management theory, firms must understand it before implementation efforts are considered (Fahy and Smithee, 1999). This paper will synthesise literature, including industry exemplars of practice, pertaining to both RBV and CRM, to demonstrate how RBV can serve as the foundation for effective CRM strategy and implementation. More specifically, it will elucidate the importance of human capital within the hotel context to achieve this.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 2009 |
Event | The Toursim and Hospitality Research in Ireland Conference (THRIC) - DIT, DIT Duration: 01 Jan 2009 → … |
Conference
Conference | The Toursim and Hospitality Research in Ireland Conference (THRIC) |
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City | DIT |
Period | 01/01/2009 → … |