Customer relationship management activities in the tourism enterprises: an application in the a group travel agencies in İstanbul

Knowing the customers, recognizing them and developing the products peculiar to them constitues the basis of the customer relationship management (CRM). In this regard, obtaining the information about the customers is one of the basic substances and plays a key role to reach CRM targets. Today the firms in the service industry are able to compete through their customers relationship and they direct their operational strategies that it could become customer centred. The tourism enterprises which have operations in a global market environment have been also developing products peculiar to domestic and foreign tourists and by securing the customer satisfaction, increase the numbers of their customers and seek the ways of increasing their profits through lower costs. A lot of hotel enterprises, travelling agents or the wholesalers tour operators who have realized how CRM secures them significant advantages, consistently go at aplying the CRM project in order to gather the profitable tourists and to develop long lasting relationship with them. Nevertheless, in order that the CRM be realized in a successful way as a project, first of all, all the employees must take CRM seriously, must understand it properly and appropriate themselves to it. The purpose of this inquiry is to consider the matter regarding the designating the level of CRM applications at the tourism enterprises at lenght by bringing up theoretically the importance of the applications of the customer relationship management in regard with the enterprises and the consumers in the servise sector. The phase of the research directed towards this purpose, is consisted of the traveling agents of group A, which carry on their activities in city of Istanbul, European side, within the borders of zone Sisli. 20 traveling agents of group A were chosen as a cluster and total 227 overall surveys have been employed on the employees of these agents. In the end of the appliance, each dispersal of statement, frequency and percent have been taken and evaluated with the purpose to depict the obtained data. Additionally, the views directed towards each of the said statements have been tested Independent-Samples T Test and One-Way ANOVA (One-Factor Variance Analyse) to see whether there is and important difference in the significance level of 0,05 in accordance with some characteristics of the employees. Nonetheless, a Kruskal-Wallis H test has been applied in order to determine whether or not it displays a significant difference in regard with the employees views in the 0,05 significance level in accordance with some characteristics of the employing agents. Findings obtained in accordance with the views of the agent employees, displays that the CRM applications? level of the travelling agents is in an affirmative direction. On the other hand, it was seen that the views of the employees regarding the CRM applications, displayed meaningful varieties according to some of the characteristics of the agents (period of the activity, personnel number and number of branches) they work with. The later operations can be assessed in regard with the catering enterprises, traveling enterprises and the hotel enterprises by associating them with customer satisfaction, customer allegiance and data mining, besides thoroughly examining the technological dimensions which have been underestimated during this research. Additionally, CRM can be also delt with in regard with the consumers and a research in a wider extent can be made.