ATG Wins Hyatt Hotels

In the hospitality business, happy customers hold the keys to success. And more of these customers are making travel plans, such as hotel reservations, online. It's no wonder that the hospitality industry and online CRM applications are colliding; Hyatt Hotels announced today it has chosen CRM vendor Art Technology Group (ATG) to provide the underlying framework to manage Hyatt.com and Hyatt's North American network of 120 Web sites.

ATG's framework includes a feature set called Scenario Personalization, a suite of tools that help make a customer's Web experience easier and more friendly. Specifically, Scenario Personalization lets Hyatt personalize the Web to a specific customer and then enables the company to conduct interactive marketing programs tailored to that individual. The technology also recalls customer data so that customers don't have to re-key information every time they visit the site.

Personalization was apparently the winning feature set. Tony Pecucci, director of electronic distribution at Hyatt, says his company chose ATG because of the "robust personalization options." Moreover, "We chose the platform because it enabled us to pre-populate reservations, as well as target customers and provide them with information specific to their interests," he says.

ATG customers include Aetna, American Airlines, Sun Microsystems and other blue-chip companies. Implementation of ATG products at Hyatt will be handled by integrator Critical Mass. Specific terms of the solution sale were not disclosed.

Tom Kaneshige also writes for Line56.com