Like most of us, I attend a lot of meetings.  (Meetings � you know � those little professional safety valves that business people build into their schedule to keep productivity numbers from skyrocketing.)  During a recent meeting, our marketing strategists were discussing plans announced by a competing resort chain to fund yet another state-of-the-art guest history and preference system.  Their new system (and see if any of this sounds familiar) would catalog each guest�s champagne wishes and caviar dreams.  This wealth of information would all be instantly available to a state-of-the-art desk clerk, who would transform guest registration into the kind of fantasy fulfillment one typically associates with 900 numbers.  Our marketing mogul ended with a summary observation that most of us have listened to for a couple of decades now: �The staff will know that Mr. Smith favors a Merlot over a Cabernet and definitely prefers a feather pillow.�

In attendance at that same meeting was an operations executive, a well-respected and well-traveled industry veteran, who asked the most thought-provoking question of the session: �Has anyone ever stayed in a hotel that actually does something with that information?�  Profound silence ensued.

Certainly all of us know that there are hotels that do in fact do something with guest information, but two and a half decades into the Information Age the question is still being asked.  Given the length of time that information specialists have been keeping electronic tabs on the traveling public, isn�t it odd that industry insiders still regard checking into a hotel with exceptional (or any) guest recognition skills as an uncommon experience?

The better question is �What do hotels do with their guest history information?�  The first and most obvious answer is that chain hotels offer �frequent sleeper� clubs that promise airline points or bonus stays as a reward for continued patronage.  Certainly we all love freebies, and if there�s a choice in accommodation then earning a few loyalty points probably breaks a tie.  But do club points add value to the guest experience?  Has being a frequent sleeper made you more recognizable to the staff?  Has the service improved?  Did your membership earn you your Merlot and feather pillow?  My own personal experience as a club member has been that I spend more time at the front desk finding my account number and fighting to make certain that my points are properly credited.  

A second easy answer is that the hotel used its guest history files to build the proverbial mailing list, that magic chance for guests who live in deserving zip codes to read about the Dew Drop Inn when they�re not traveling.  This is an excellent use of guest history� for the hotel.  Mailings lure new guests to the door or remind those who have visited to come again, but they still don�t do much for the guest in search of the elusive feather pillow.

So what happened to the PMS feature our industry fought hard to get and now struggles to use?  Other than to puncture the database every so often to see if it will bleed a mailing list, I contend that virtually nothing is done with the information asset we think we cherish.  Very rarely do I see a front desk agent actually use information at hand to make my stay more hospitable or to choose my room with criteria other than �vacant� and �clean.�  The act of collecting data keeps more than one or two of us in paychecks, but the act of using information on behalf of a guest is still a sadly undeveloped art.  We behave as though data is the object of the game, when in fact it is merely a means to an end.  We confuse knowledge with data � they aren�t even vaguely the same commodities.  Intelligence is what we really crave, but file storage capacity is what we have to show for our efforts.  Quantity is measurable so quantity becomes the product.  Show me the IT professional who brags about guest history file size, and I�ll show you a mother load of fool�s gold.  But find the front office specialist who can use on-line data to personalize the guest�s stay and knowingly offer a tailor-made experience and you will have arrived at El Dorado.  

Am I prone to exaggeration?  Perhaps a little, but the three questions I am still most frequently asked by a registration clerk are, in order:

1. Could you spell that for me, please?
2. Do you have a credit card with you?
3. Have you stayed with us before?

How can we convert from �being here� to �getting there�?  Let me offer a few recommendations for effectively implementing a �state-of-the-art� customer intelligence database:
 

And it might be a good idea to keep a little Merlot handy on those days when you�re overbooked on your upgraded pillows.