Introduction

Literature review

Research methodology

Classification and analysis

CRM in hospitality and related themes

Discussion and future research

Limitations

References

ABSTRACT

This study reviews research articles published in the area of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the hospitality industry. The aim of this article is to systematically review the entire hospitality CRM literature to identify topical themes and trends. For this systematic literature review, four databases, namely, Elsevier, Emerald Insight, Sage, and Taylor and Francis were chosen to identify the research work published in the said arena. A total of 136 articles with 9900 citations in 46 journals were chosen from the four databases as they contained the relevant articles. These research papers were reviewed and classified based on their year of publication, journal of publication, databases, topics and key themes that emerged over the years. The gaps and trends were also identified to suggest further scope of research.

Introduction

The global hospitality industry is on the upward trajectory, with numbers of consumers increasing every year. The flourishing travel and tourism industry is one of the reasons for growth in the hospitality sector. The hospitality industry which is a customer-centric industry relies heavily on customers’ information and therefore Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is implemented worldwide in this sector (Sigala, 2005). A research was carried out by Yoo, Lee, and Bai (2011) on significant trends in the hospitality industry, which states that CRM is one of the most popular research topics for hospitality industry academicians. The research and consultancy organization Gartner (2018) states that $39.5 billion US dollars were spent on CRM software in the year 2017 and the market will grow at 16%. CRM has also been cited among the top five significant technologies in the world (Luftman et al., 2012).