Customer profitability analysis an avant-garde approach to revenue optimisation in hotels

The widespread use of customer relationship management systems has provided hospitality/hotel organisations with detailed insights into the profitability of their individual customers and at the same time have highlighted unprofitable patrons. Critically appreciating contributions in the area of customer profitability analysis (CPA), this paper provides a retrospective (management accounting) and prospective (customer lifetime value) approach to estimate profitability of customer/guest segments in the hotel business environment. The research enumerates antecedents and outcomes of CPA and proposes an integrated framework to render robustness to the prevalent revenue management systems.