Customer Relationship Management Practices : A Case of Hotels in Ashanti Region of Ghana

Abstract: This study is a descriptive research aimed at accessing and describing the CRM practices of hotels in Ghana. The main objective of study was to classify the hotels in Ashanti region of Ghana into two categories - low CRM conscious and high CRM conscious with respect to the four behavoural components of CRM (Key Customer Focus, CRM Organization, Knowledge Management, and Technology-based CRM.) proposed by Sin, Tse and Yim (2004).
The target population of the study was hotels in Ghana. Hotels in Ashanti region was taken as the sample size of the study. The major findings of the study are that hotels with high ‗star ratings‘ reported high level of CRM practices, consciousness and orientation than the hotels with low ‗star ratings‘. It was found that the level of CRM consciousness and orientation of the hotels vary with respect to the four dimensions (Key Customer Focus, CRM Organization, Knowledge Management, and Technology-based CRM. ).
The Technology-based CRM dimension recorded the lowest level of orientation among the hotels and the Knowledge Management dimension recorded the highest level of orientation. Again, the results of the study suggest that significant majority of the hotels exhibit high level of orientation to the Key Customer Focus dimension and Knowledge Management dimension of CRM. Likewise, the findings suggest that a significant majority of the hotels exhibit low level of orientation towards the CRM Organization dimension, and the Technology-based CRM dimension of CRM.
The study recommends that the government of Ghana should consider a policy that will encourage management of hotels to practice CRM. For example, government could institute a day to create awareness and to award hotels for best CRM practice as in the case of farmers and teachers. The hotel industry could also institute award night to create awareness of the importance CRM practices to the industry and to encourage good CRM practices among hotels of the industry as in the case of the Ghana music industry. This will go a long way to encourage the hotels and make them conscious of their customers.
It is recommended that since majority of the customer service officers of the hotels have low level of education and experience, management of the hotels should consider engaging more qualified and experienced CRM officers or train the existing CRM officers to handle CRM issues of the hotels. Against the findings that the use of technology is low among the hotels, it is recommended that the hotels should make maximum use of the existing level of information technology to leverage effective and efficient CRM practice.