Loyalty Magic

Hotel meshes data across properties THE PREFERENCE of a smoking or non-smoking room, and which daily newspaper a guest enjoys may not seem like key business-building data points, but at the Manhattan East Suite Hotels, they’re considered essential.

Of course, they only become so when the New York chain’s marketing experts apply some “Magic” in the form of its in-house customer database, the Marketing and Guest Information Center, implemented in April 1999.

These two bits of information are actionable data that allow guests to see immediate benefits. In just over a year, the hotel chain has gone from registering this data on 5% of its customers to almost 80%. This tactic has become even more crucial as the chain’s customer file has increased in quantity: When the Magic database was first installed it contained records on just over 175,000 guests, compared with more than 300,000 today.

But these are not the only bits of information recorded. Anytime a guest bills a meal to a room, asks for a certain type of pillow or makes a request from housekeeping, the hotel captures the preference. Magic’s closed-loop architecture allows hotel employees to pull up these preferences and offer them the next time the guest visits.

The emphasis on building its customer database represents a change in focus for the 10-location Manhattan East. Previously the data capture and transfer process between its properties and its off-site database was not quick or flexible enough to support the chain’s direct marketing needs.

Furthermore, customer data had been siloed within each of the hotel properties. An all-encompassing marketing program proved difficult to administer across all sites.

Compounding the chain’s headaches, frequent customers often booked from home, as well as from work or through travel agents. This would result in a single customer being listed as many as five or six times in the database, and being credited with fewer stays than had been earned.

This type of database hygiene is the forte of DM1, a software product from Lanham, MD’s Group 1 Software that Manhattan East uses as Magic’s engine. DM1 has allowed the hotel to standardize and combine disparate customer records, allowing the chain to market to customers based on their true value.

Plans call for the database to eventually serve as the backbone for a formal replacement to Best in the House, a loyalty program the chain has discontinued.

While still in its rudimentary stage, Magic’s ability to target valued guests across the entire chain has generated $160,000 in revenue from bookings as a result of two direct mail campaigns. The first – a 55,516-piece mailing in winter 1999 – netted a 1.94% response rate. The second was a spring 114,862-piece drop that pulled .94% – and would have been higher, except the chain ran out of rooms to offer.