A Study of Aspects of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the Hotel Industry of Iran

Tourist attraction and satisfaction is one of the success factors in tourist industry. On the other hand, hotel industry is one of the key elements in this achievement which requires utilizing new technologies including customer relationship management (CRM). CRM is among those technologies that play a crucial role in customers retention, and maintaining their loyapties. But it should be noted that for every technology to be successful, there should be suitable fields for successful implementation.In this research, the successful implementation of CRM in Iranian hotel industry is surveyed using Gartners model. Important factors in successful implementation of CRM is recognized, and required data is gathered using a questionnaire. Findings indicated that hotel industry in Iran is essentially not performing well regarding factors such as changes in customer life cycle, gathering and analyzing information and transforming it to the knowledge for hotel planning, using new methods like well designed websites, continuous relationships with active and inactive customers. on the other hand hotel industry in Iran has great strength regarding factors such as: top management commitment to long term customer attraction and retention, customer feedback, employees skills, and cost-benefit analysis. Finally it can be concluded that hotel industry in Iran possess's great potentials in successful customer relationship management implementation.