I am attending a new conference today in San Francisco: “CRM and the Travel Industry” organized by the Eye for Travel organization. So far, the main focus of the speakers has been on customer service (training employees on the importance of the customer). There is no doubt that the human interaction element of CRM is a key in keeping customers happy, but so far there has been limited discussion of technology that is needed to provide the infrastructure to support CRM at every touch point. Jon Marnela from Fairmont did mention the fact that a consumer’s profile is sent down to the property’s PMS system. British Airways establishes a score based on corporate relationships and influence to develop a score for each traveler

In my view is that CRM is more than customer care. Yes it is true that technology is not a CRM solution, but without the proper infrastructure, executing on CRM will likely fails. So far there has been no mention of Web 2.0 and the new role of customer generated content on the CRM process.