Online relationship marketing development: The case of 4- and 5-star hotels in Russia and Austria

Abstract

The goal of this master thesis is to elaborate practical recommendations of online relationship marketing development for the hotel managers by analyzing online relationship marketing development in 4- and 5-starts hotels in Russia and Austria. In order to achieve this goal existing theoretical sources about relationship marketing development and online relationship marketing are analyzed; methodology for the empirical research of 3 different channels of online relationship marketing is elaborated; empirical analysis of websites’ online relationship marketing development, e-mail response behavior, customers online reviews and scores is made. Main results of this paper are: first, it shows that hoteliers do not use website as a tool of online relationship marketing development to the full extent; second, hotels demonstrated poor response beahvior on e-mail booking inquieries and third, hotel anagers do not pay enough attention to the online customers reviews. For each of these elements practical recommendations aimed on performance improvement are elaborated. These recommendations help to improve the whole scope of online relationship management.