Data is a crucial aspect for daily operations of passenger
airlines, luxury cruise lines, car rental companies, passenger railways,
hotels, travel agencies, casinos, and several other travel and hospitality
industry players. This vertical relies heavily on data for supporting vital business
functions and providing quality services to its customers. Data
integration in the travel and hospitality vertical is used to consolidate its
operational and customer data from widespread sources - such as operations, marketing,
accounting, customer relations, and security channels.
IBM
is an internationally recognized developer of computing hardware, middleware,
and software. Its cutting-edge hosting and consulting services have
applications in several fields, ranging from mainframe computers to niche
sectors like nanotechnology. On the 360Quadrants
platform, it is recognized as a visionary leader. This recognition comes with
IBM’s reputable data integration solutions and its strong business strategies.
Among its numerous innovations over the years, IBM is also the
developer of a Customer Information System (CIS) Data Model that has broad
applicability in the hospitality industry. The Data Model acts as a virtual
warehouse for guest-related information and helps hotels boost their initiatives
in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketing by operating as the
foundation of their data repositories.
The Data Model is customizable as per the specific needs of
different hotels and other organizations. It records and manages guests'
complete profiles and transaction histories across the globe. This data comes from
disparate sources, such as folios, reservations, preferences, point-of-sale
transactions, complaints, loyalty program transactions, and marketing promotion
responses, as well as general lifestyle and demographic information. The Data
Model also provides the infrastructure required for manipulating guest
information and data mining. The information gleaned from this solution helps
hotels detect trends and obtain new insights into guest behavior. Thus, hotels
and other organizations will be able to develop new marketing strategies,
products, and services as per specific customer requirements.
IBM’s CIS Hospitality Data Model comes with a campaign
management module that enables hotels to run, analyze, and manage marketing
campaigns. Its tools give users the flexibility of multiple promotional offers,
campaign participants, campaign response types, target lists, distribution
channels, and media. The customer segments identified through data mining allows
hotels to develop personalized offers for their guests, whose responses are
then tracked and analyzed to grant greater insight into successful promotion
techniques.
360Quadrants also lists competitors
of IBM in the Data Integration software in travel and hospitality space.
