Building Customer Loyalty

I recently spoke with a resort manager about a stunning Asian hotel I had stayed in. His first response to my appraisal of the beautiful surroundings and exotic culture was, "Oh yes, they have fantastic service there."

Hoteliers know that the key to their business lies in hospitality. It's too bad, says Jonathan Tisch, chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, that other industries don't take the same credo to heart.

As chairman of The Travel Business Roundtable, a coalition of chief executives in travel and tourism, and NYC & Company, New York City's official tourism marketing organization, Tisch shares his hospitality expertise in his new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience, released February 2007, with co-writer Karl Weber.

Customer loyalty is declining in all industries, says Tisch, because of gross neglect. "Companies today are taking their customers for granted," he says.

Even worse, companies are thinking of their customer base as unintelligent, forgetting the power of resources such as the Internet to educate and inform.

"[Many companies] have no appreciation for the knowledge base and sophistication of today's consumers," he says. "Thanks to the Internet and amount of information out there, the customer is highly educated and making tremendous choices in how they do business."

It's becoming increasingly vital for companies to break through all that mass-marketing noise and connect with customers in a real way, says Tisch, "so they know you really care about them."