GuestWare Enterprise Keeps Kimpton 'In Touch' With its Thousands of Loyal Customers
"Being able to know our guests, serve them, reward them and market to them is the crux of what we are trying to accomplish with GuestWare."
Renée Will George, director of customer relationship management and strategic marketing
San Francisco - based chain powers guest loyalty program with innovative software
SAN FRANCISCO - The Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, which owns and operates a unique collection of 37 hotels, always has had the goal of creating unique and personalized experiences for its guests. That strategy has paid tremendous dividends for the San Francisco - based company; its guests return time and time again to its boutique - style properties in places such as Chicago, Miami and Washington, D.C.
Guest loyalty is critical to the success of any hotel chain but in Kimpton's case it has gone far beyond the norm to cultivate its repeat business. Evidence of that is its guest loyalty program - InTouch - which has grown to close to 140,000 members since it was launched systemwide in January 2004. Kimpton customers can sign up for InTouch at the company's website - www.kimptonhotels.com. At Kimpton's site, guests can select preferences such as bed type, pillow type, newspaper, room location, and smoking or nonsmoking room. Preferences can be unique to an individual property or pertain to Kimpton hotels systemwide. Guests are also asked to list a personal interest.
When guests sign up for InTouch, they are given a Personal Booking Code. This is used each time the guest makes a reservation so that their personal preferences are recognized and the Kimpton InTouch profile is credited for their stays. InTouch members use the code to log in to Kimpton's site when they want to change preferences or view their stay history. In addition to having their preferences met, members of InTouch receive a welcome amenity during their stay. Members also receive a quarterly newsletter, exclusive e - mail offers and access to the Kimpton Service Desk.
Inner Circle members - those InTouch guests who stay 15 times or 45 nights during a calendar year - receive additional perks such as complimentary upgrades, invitations to hotel openings and even direct phone access to Tom LaTour, Kimpton's chairman and CEO. Whether an InTouch member or Inner Circle member, all repeat guests who sign up for Kimpton's guest loyalty program have their preferences met at any Kimpton hotel. This is true whether a guest books a room through Kimpton's central reservation office (CRO) or through the company website or online booking engine.
Kimpton chooses GuestWare Enterprise
GuestWare's Enterprise software powers Kimpton's innovative guest loyalty program. GuestWare is developed, marketed, implemented and supported by Diversified Computer Corp., Seattle. The InTouch loyalty sign - up form is powered by GuestWare and creates profiles directly in the Enterprise database. The profiles are used to streamline the online or call center reservation process for InTouch members through an interface with Pegasus CRS.
GuestWare also automates recognition and service delivery processes at the property level with interfaces to each of Kimpton's PMS systems (Epitome, Fidelio & LANMark). GuestWare's unique matching process compares expected arrivals with InTouch members and other repeat customers to ensure guests are recognized and preferences are delivered. The arrivals process provides each Kimpton hotel's guest champion with a streamlined recognition process with built in accountability.
"GuestWare provides the means to recognize our guests when they walk through the door," says Renée Will George, director of customer relationship management and strategic marketing for the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group. "It also helps us customize our guests' stays and deliver a 'wow' experience. That's very different from other guest loyalty programs. Because we are able to provide over - the - top personalized experiences and meet our guests' preferences, we are able to create very loyal Kimpton customers."
In addition to managing the loyalty program, GuestWare extracts all guest visit data from the property management systems and merges and cleanses the data on a nightly basis to provide a consolidated guest history for the entire company.
"GuestWare enables us to efficiently weed out those visits that are not award - eligible," Will George says.
The Enterprise client provides access to profiles at all touch points including the corporate or regional level as well as property and reservations. Being able to quickly look up and view a guest's preferences, visit and reward history is valuable when responding to customer inquiries. At the point of reservation, agents can ask about preferences and update them immediately.
From a CRM prospective, GuestWare is unique in its ability to close the loop as information flows through each customer touch point without human intervention. The same profile created within Enterprise is the same one used at the point of reservation , throughout the stay, for marketing communication and on the website. From a guest perspective closing the loop ensures guests never have to provide the same information twice.
Guest information stored within Enterprise is also used by Kimpton for its e - mail marketing campaigns. Kimpton can send pinpointed mailings because it asks its InTouch members at the point of membership what interests pertain to their lifestyle - wine, theater or yoga, for example.
"Being able to know our guests, serve them, reward them and market to them is the crux of what we are trying to accomplish," Will George says.
The ROI from these e - mail campaigns alone has made Enterprise a worthwhile investment, Will George says. Kimpton uses Novato, Calif. - based iPost's Web - based Mailing Manager to e - mail its marketing messages. GuestWare recently partnered with iPost to provide Kimpton and other companies like it with an innovative approach to customer relationship management that integrates e - mail and Web - based marketing with guest recognition and service delivery.
Guest information stored within Enterprise also is used by Kimpton to send surveys to its guests. Diversified Computer Corp. is working with Kimpton to develop the technology that would enable comment card scores to "travel" with each guest's profile. Managers also would have the ability to know if a guest completed a survey, when it was completed and at which hotel.
Kimpton rolls out guest response initiative
In addition to using GuestWare Enterprise for its guest loyalty program, Kimpton is in the process of rolling out GuestWare's Rapid Response system in all of its hotels. It will be used to log, dispatch and follow - up on every guest request and problem. By the end of June, all 13 of Kimpton's San Francisco area hotels will be using the system. The tool tracks incidents, improves problem resolution and collects data to help eliminate recurring problems. An important benefit of tracking incidents in GuestWare is that each request and problem is linked to the guest profile. By knowing that a guest had a problem during a previous stay, hotel staff can provide the guest with an extra amenity, upgrade or other type of enhanced service.
At Kimpton's Argonaut Hotel, which already is using Rapid Response, guests call a Guest Services number with problems or requests. Once learning of the guest's concern, the PBX agent logs the request or incident into GuestWare's Request Entry screen. Customizable hot buttons and drill - down menus provide the agent with the means to enter the information quickly. By radio, the agent then calls the appropriate person - in engineering or housekeeping, for example - about the issue.
"Our standard is to respond to a guest's request within 10 minutes," says Barry Pollard, general manager at the hotel.
While the incident or request is pending, it is displayed as open in GuestWare. The elapsed time also is displayed. If a request becomes overdue, the PBX agent is notified with an on - screen alert. Once the issue is addressed, the engineer or housekeeper calls the PBX agent, who then closes the call in one quick step. The agent also reports back to the guests to let them know that the issues have been resolved.
"I like the incident tracking feature within GuestWare because it enables us to see recurring problems," Pollard says. "Incident logs generated out of GuestWare each morning enable me to see all incidents that happened - positive or negative - during the previous day."
At the Hotel Salomar San Diego, where Rapid Response also has been implemented, associates there use GuestWare's automated SmartRunner paging solution instead of radios to respond to guest calls. When a call comes into the call center, the request is logged into GuestWare and then dispatched. The text message on each page includes the guest's name, room number and type of problem. When an issue is resolved, the person receiving the original page sends a "close" message back to GuestWare using the pager.
Will George says other guest issues are logged into GuestWare reported to the corporate office, through the Kimpton Service Desk or through the reservation center. Enterprise provides a centralized view all problems and requests whether that is for a particular guest or from an overall corporate quality standpoint. For Kimpton, the ability to respond quickly to guest requests and problems adds to the value of the guest experience. In fact, quick problem resolution is something demanding Kimpton guests expect and it keeps them loyal to the Kimpton brand.
"We have strong evidence through our comment cards that guests' intent to return rates are higher when their issues are resolved immediately," Will George says.
In addition to using GuestWare for guest recognition and guest response, Kimpton also is testing GuestWare's Facilities Maintenance software. This Preventive Maintenance (PM) system provides Kimpton with an efficient way to plan, record and analyze the maintenance of its guest rooms. Preventive maintenance installs with a room checklist that defines when a room is due for PM and the tasks to be accomplished. Kimpton currently is testing Facilities Maintenance at its Argonaut hotel.
"We like it because we have an accurate record of when every room in the hotel was checked for PM," Pollard says. "We previously had a manual system that included tracking room PMs on a big board. It was very tedious and difficult to maintain. GuestWare is much more efficient."
Kimpton, GuestWare share success
More than five years after its hotels started using GuestWare, and more than a year after it implemented its guest loyalty program systemwide, Kimpton continues to build positive, long - term, profitable relationships with its guests. With 3,000 to 6,000 customers signing up for InTouch on a monthly basis, there is no doubt that guests are finding many reasons to be loyal Kimpton customers - thanks, in part, to GuestWare.