providing prohibited items in their room amenities. Some members also pointed to accommodations already being made by Hilton’s rivals, a valuable bit of competitive intelligence.

BY PAUL GILLIN

HOSPITALITY COMPANIES learn to sweat the details. In the ul-tracompetitive hotel industry, a chocolate on the pillow or a free tube of toothpaste can make the difference between a drive-by customer and a loyal fan.

Hilton Hotels Corp. is tapping into the power of online communities to augment its traditional research and respond more quickly to traveler needs in its Hilton Family line of hotels. The company’s use of a full-service online community provider has transformed its approach to measuring and understanding customer satisfaction, said Christine Hight, Hilton Family’s director of customer research. Company policy prohibits Hilton from identifying the vendor it uses to

manage the community.

The Hilton Family’s hospitality portfolio encompasses nine brands, ranging from the midscale traveler-oriented Hampton chain to the luxury Waldorf-Astoria Collection line. Business travelers are a key constituency.

While many companies listen to customer conversations online, Hilton Family is taking a more active approach. Insight from conversations now underlies much of the traditional market research that it uses.

Its service provider helps recruit guests as community members, suggests ways to ask questions, jump-starts discussions and invents novel tactics to probe for information. Hilton researchers regard community members as kind of a standing focus group that can be tapped by dif-

ferent brands for different purposes. Membership is controlled and profiled. Members receive modest rewards, mostly points in the HHonors affinity program.

One benefit of customer communities is speed of response. Quantitative surveys and focus groups can take months to field and interpret. In contrast, customer conversations may materialize within minutes of a catalyst event.

For example, on the day in 2006 that the Federal Transportation Safety Administration announced its ban on liquids in carry-on airline baggage, a member of Hilton Family’s 300-person community initiated a discussion of the issue. Comments quickly established that the ban would be a source of pain for frequent travelers. Hotels could help by

COMPANY SEEKS FEEDBACK

Another unique characteristic of communities is peer-to-peer discussion. Hight noted that members frequently use the network to initiate their own conversations without prompting. But they can also be tapped for direct feedback on issues posed by the company.

For example, when rival Marriott banned smoking in its hotels, a community member started a discussion of the issue in the Hilton Family community the same day. Hilton officials asked members if its brands should follow suit. “Within 10 hours, we had a lot of feedback,” Hight said.

Hilton learned that while many guests would like to have a smoke-free hotel experience, others were concerned about smokers’ rights and comfort. They raised questions about the possibility of alienating longtime, loyal guests and how a hotel could reasonably enforce such a

policy. Using input from the community and other sources, Hilton Family decided not to establish smoke-free policies in all its hotels, although Hight said it periodically revisits the issue.

Hilton has taken some innovative approaches to obtaining feedback. For example, an effort to gain insight about customers’ use of HHonors points to book stays had the company asking members to upload pictures and descriptions from their recent rewards travel. In another exercise, members were asked to share examples of prearrival communications they received for a wide variety of products and services that they reserved in advance. “It was like a scavenger hunt for grown-ups, and they enjoyed it,” Hight said.

The secrets of success? Hight recommends thinking of communities as qualitative research but not as a replacement for traditional surveys. She advises keeping the group small and always showing members that their comments are taken seriously. “Let members know what actions are being taken as a result of their input,” she said.

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