Social customer relation management for tourism in Saudi Arabia: A case study

In spite of the commitment of huge resources and the restructuring of the tourism sector by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the development of the sector has remained stunted with little or no growth in its contributions to the country's GDP over the past decade since the restructuring that culminated into the establishment of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. This has remained a subject of great concern to the government and investors in the tourism sector as even the citizens of the country has consistently preferred travelling abroad for tourism purposes rather than utilising the avalanche of tourism facilities in the country. Although, the tourism sector of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had received appreciable attention from empirical studies in the past, however, little research has been conducted into exploring the strained relationship between the sector and the tourism population in the country, with a view to assessing the capability of the social CRM as a new strategy and application approach that could revitalise the customer relationship management of the sector. Therefore, this study critically reviewed the degree of relevance of social CRM to the business processes of the SCTA, examined the awareness, attitude and perception of the Saudi public to tourism in the country, assessed the service delivery and customer satisfaction of the SCTA in recent years and proposed solution framework that is aimed to foster better CRM within the tourism sector of the country. The study found that inadequate awareness, alienation, poor enlightenment campaign, inadequate transparency, exorbitant pricing system, ineffective communication flow, misconception of roles and responsibilities and over centralisation of authority are the main challenges facing the growth of the sector in the country. Therefore, the study proposed a solution framework that recommends the introduction of the social CRM strategy and approach in the relationship between the commission and the members of the public which will see to the integration of the Saudi people into the designing, planning, execution and delivery of tourism services in the country. Other recommendations that are expected to evolve far reaching impacts within the tourism sector of the country were also proposed.