Intrawest’s “Voice of the Customer” Initiative Drives Business Intelligence

Raising the Bar for Guest Satisfaction at Destination Resorts

Intrawest is a world leader in the development and operation of experiential destination resorts that has captured the hearts of millions of guests. The company has interests in 11 resorts at North America’s most popular mountain destinations, including Whistler Blackcomb, a host venue for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Intrawest's world-class assets have become premier destinations through the passion of more than 22,000 employees.

The popularity of Intrawest and their animated playgrounds is largely due to a combination of spectacular resort locations, highly motivated and creative employees, coupled with greater levels of customer satisfaction. In fact, a large percentage of their lodging revenue is typically derived from returning guests with a high intent to recommend. And they are constantly getting new customers by referral.

In an effort to leverage their success with returning guests, Intrawest refocused their emphasis on customer satisfaction by putting into place a system that measures every facet of guest satisfaction along with intent to return and/or recommend. With the high cost of customer acquisition, they recognized a great marketing opportunity to aim for higher satisfaction scores that translate into repeat business and referrals.

Daphne Hampson, Vice President Lodging, knows from firsthand experience how useful guest feedback can create business intelligence that can optimize the customer experience and drive repeat business. For the past year she has spearheaded Intrawest's "Voice of the Customer" program initiative to improve service delivery to their guests by creating a 360-degree view of the customer experience. The success of this program has been demonstrated throughout Intrawest's lodging operations and validated by operational benchmarks with, of course, a steady increase in returning guests (along with their friends).

“It‘s vital for us to understand how our customers feel about their experience and that they are being well received,” Hampson explained. “We wanted to get the total view from their perspective. We also needed a balance scorecard with data that encapsulates guest satisfaction and performance benchmarks within the context of how our company is doing financially. The GUESTScope® feedback solution from UniFocus has provided us with just such an opportunity - with the added ability to see the demographics and how this is broken down by resort and whether we are meeting and/ or exceeding customer expectations.”

Many resort operators tend to focus more on financial data than on customer satisfaction. However, Intrawest discovered that these two aspects are very much interrelated. Their feedback reports offer a level of granularity that previously did not exist, enabling the organization to utilize OLAP (on-line analytical processing) reporting to create actionable business intelligence. The organization also charts performance benchmarks against 4-star hotel properties and closely follows industry trends. Once the report scorecard metrics are generated for their lodging operations, the knowledge is then shared across the enterprise.

“In our resort operations we firstly look at metrics that focus on the front desk and housekeeping,” continued Hampson. “We want to know about all aspects of our guests' experience, including speed of check-in, friendliness of staff, whether the room was ready on time, and the effectiveness of the problem/resolution process. We also look across the entire operation and do a comparative performance analysis of our resorts in an effort to support our corporate initiative to achieve higher guest satisfaction scores. Then we extrapolate data from our reporting to ascertain yearly or monthly trends and whether or not we require more training for our staff or whether we need to beef-up operations in other areas.”

The GUESTScope® feedback solution from UniFocus can generate customized feedback reports for Intrawest that deliver a greater level of intelligence across the enterprise. These collaborative efforts are expected to evolve as they tie guest satisfaction to benchmarks, capture more guest information and increase the response rate. As Intrawest continues to expand, their research and knowledge will likewise continue to grow so that they can continue to raise the bar for guest satisfaction.

Smart hotel and resort operators know that the lifetime value of a satisfied guest can have far reaching implications. For this reason the success of Intrawest's "Voice of the Customer program" has gained the attention of the highest levels of management. Intrawest and UniFocus have built a technological foundation for continued improvement and refinement that will yield more information about the guest experience that can be transformed into even higher levels of customer satisfaction.

In the future, Intrawest will continue to tap into what their guests would like to see and make refinements in their survey criteria to find out how their operations can be improved further. Hampson explained that they now have a baseline and the research necessary to evolve their Voice of the Customer program to incorporate a more diverse set of data points. Their partnership with UniFocus is also expected to grow through the interchange of knowledge and expertise - with the ultimate objective of making happier guests and all stakeholders more successful - and giving resort operators a higher return on investment.