The Axient Team travels frequently and has a corporate membership with a global, publicly listed company that operates 16 brand names, 4,100 hotels and nearly 500,000 rooms in 90 countries.
I recently visited Melbourne and Auckland and was underwhelmed by our hotel partner before my travel even started. I feel for the CMO, Sales Director and COO for this hotel group because I think there is more than one customer feeling this way.
Why?
These two booking confirmations - Melbourne - New Zealand - are the original documents the hotel sent me.
What are they missing?
Putting aside the obvious lack of:
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Punctuation
- Layout and Presentation
- Editable Terms and Conditions
Revenue is at the top. Their communications with me aren't leveraging my custom. That is, this hotel group knows a lot about me. I've been a member of their loyalty program for five years so they know my personal interests and they certainly know my spending habits. For example they may have:
- Offered me a room upgrade
- Started an interactive conversation with me
- Extended information in the document that integrated me with their web site
Each interaction is an opportunity to reinforce who you are.
As a global, public business that states:
"With a brand portfolio that ranges from luxury to budget hotels, is currently the only hotel group active in all the market's segments".
"This wide range of products means it can meet the demand for segmentation from customers and owners seeking a 'multi-brand and multi-segment' offer".
Where are:
- Logos
- Other brand elements
- Other hotels in the group that I may vacation in
Given the organisations knowledge of me there was an opportunity to customise the document for my profile.
My assumption from these documents is that IT Management is making do with MS Word macro and mail merge processes. Across the region I'd have to think that maintaining these processes are both costly and time consuming.
The moral of the story - this is a missed opportunity waiting to be turned around. Document Output Management provides strategic capability to achieve wonderful, exciting and powerful customer communications.
