September 30, 2003 - When guests check in to The Carlyle, Manhattan's five-star, 35-story landmark hotel, they know they are in the exhilarating heart of New York City. From its chic art deco ambiance, to the personal white-glove service of its liveried doormen and enviable views of Central Park, The Carlyle surrounds guests with an environment that is the quintessential New York City experience.  The property�s aristocratic Upper East Side city atmosphere is no accident of geography.  Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, which operates 11 luxury properties in locales as diverse as the Caribbean, the Ginza District in

The Carlyle Madison Avenue at 76th Street New York, NY

�Most of our city properties are doing very well,� said Rosewood�s Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Robert Boulogne.  �Despite current industry trends, affluent travel has not fallen off.  We have strong weekends at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and at our Tokyo property, Hotel Seiyo Ginza.  And our Las Ventanas al Paraíso resort in Los Cabos, Mexico consistently runs at 90 percent occupancy.  The common denominator at these hotels is a high percentage of repeat business -- and personalized guest service is the key.� 

Global, Consolidated Data Warehouse Guides CRM Strategies

The 24-year-old company plans to add one or two properties each year and increase its repeat factor by 10 percent in the next 24 months.  Marketing to its guests and building brand loyalty are strategic missions of Rosewood.  To learn more about its guests, the company recently switched from manually pulling guest data from its 11 separate property management systems, to automating data gathering through its central reservation system (CRS) and creating one global, flexible data warehouse for all its hotels. 

To accomplish this, in early 2003 Rosewood began working with a company specializing in database development and marketing to standardize, clean, and combine the separate guest history records from its properties.  Boulogne continued, �We brought in The IDT Group to automate data gathering from our hotels; they developed a consolidated data warehouse with guest information we can use to guide our CRM strategies and marketing programs.  We are using their database components and integrating booking data from our CRS.�  Boulogne explained that since Rosewood already had connectivity between each of its properties through its CRS, IDT was able to use the existing CRS pipe to pull guest data from each hotel�s property management system, add the rate and availability information, and automatically merge everything to build a new consolidated database on a daily basis.  Before, Rosewood�s corporate office had 11 separate property guest history systems with names, addresses and other information that was duplication prone.  Now, the evolving global guest database enables Rosewood�s executive advisory board to evolve specialized amenities and services, market them to guests, and, most importantly, track guests� responses. 

Beyond Feather Pillows 

�The traditional guest-recognition service was to provide a guest, for example, with a specific type of pillow upon arrival,� said Boulogne. �But, today, we are also able to track the repeat factor for that guest and how much they spent on room, food and beverages, and activities for stays across all Rosewood properties. In the not-so-distant future, we will combine this data with specific guest preferences provided by the guest into a comprehensive guest profile to be housed in our global data warehouse. With this, we will have the ability to expand our customer preference program across the entire Collection. This means that when a guest tells us that he likes jazz music, for example, that we can then place Wynton Marsalis CDs in his room each time he visits any Rosewood hotel around the world.� 

The IDT Group also generates specific promotional mailing lists from Rosewood�s cleansed guest database which enables the hotel company to more accurately target mailings and marketing campaigns, such as their recently concluded �Escape to Luxury� summer promotion, for the best return on its marketing investment.  �In the past, we counted package bookings from each participating property and totaled them manually,� Boulogne explained.  �Now, our vendor provides us with a conversion analysis that tracks all of the people who responded to our direct mail piece, the number of rooms booked, and the revenue linked to the package, all of which quantifies the return on our significant mailing investment.  The analysis shows that our targeted mailing stimulated repeat business, and it will impact how we promote the summer promotional campaign next year.�

Top Producing Travel Agents Tracked, Recognized

Travel agents book many of Rosewood�s reservations, and the luxury hotel company understands the importance of keeping these key relationships strong to maintain a vigorous booking pace.  To recognize travel agents who deliver the most reservations, Rosewood receives Top Travel Agent and Guest Profile reports from The IDT Group that detail which agents are providing the most bookings and which guests are the most frequent visitors to the Rosewood Collection.  The combination of these reports gives Rosewood an accurate basis for recognizing its leading producers and guests.  �Our properties and corporate office receive a weekly package from our vendor of standard and customized reports on all of our business segments in a straightforward Excel format,� continued Boulogne.   �Managers then analyze and act upon the reports.  IDT also generates custom mailing lists for all of our properties.  When we want to target a specific guest segment or region, IDT provides us with the precise list we need.�  Boulogne added that Rosewood is aware of the responsibility that comes with possessing their guests� personal data and maintains strict data security.

What has been Rosewood�s biggest benefit of deploying a consolidated guest database? �We have a greater awareness of who exactly our guests are, which is beneficial to each property and the Rosewood Collection as a whole.  This information helps us to better target new guests and increases our ability to cross-sell among the properties in the Collection,� said Boulogne, who explained that Rosewood Hotels & Resorts operates its collection of smaller, more boutique-oriented luxury properties incorporating A Sense of Place® that �marries the values and traditions of its host community with exceptional service.�  He concluded, �In the future, we will focus on brand loyalty and growing our repeat guest factor, not just at one property, but between hotels throughout the Collection.  To help with this we will install The IDT Group�s Internet-based Web Concierge guest service product that will allow clients to update their stay preferences and let Rosewood recognize them in a more personalized way.  This is key to our growth.� 

About Rosewood Hotels & Resorts
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts is the Dallas-based hotel management company of 11 ultra-luxury properties in locales as diverse as the Caribbean, the Ginza District in Tokyo, and Los Cabos, Mexico. Founded in 1979 and known worldwide for creating A Sense of Place® that reflects each location's culture, history and geography, the Rosewood collection of properties ranks in the upper echelon of destinations for sophisticated travelers that include leaders in world affairs, business and entertainment.  Several of Rosewood�s properties carry the prestigious �Five-Star� designation from the Mobil Travel Guide and are continually honored with hospitality�s highest awards.  Most recently, the readers� survey in the May/June issue of American Express� Departures magazine, provided to American Express� most well-traveled clientele, awarded honors to two thirds of the Rosewood Collection, including naming The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Texas as the �Number One Big-City Hotel in US and Canada,� and Las Ventanas al Paraíso in Los Cabos, Mexico the �Number One Hotel in Mexico, Central and South America�.

About IDT Group
The IDT Group is a solutions provider that organizes, consolidates, cleans and enriches data from various systems - such as PMS, point of sale, sales and catering, club management, spa, and other applications - into one customer database, and generates custom, client-configured reports from the database.  Through a Web interface, The IDT Group provides utilities for combining duplicate guest history records and editing data fields.   The company also provides an array of data mining and consulting services to support marketing, sales, revenue management, planning, reporting and CRM activities.  The IDT Group is the leader in the hospitality industry's growing commitment to integrate operational systems - and the data locked within them - by providing solutions that bridge the gap between "silos" and exploit the profit potential of untapped information assets.