Guest Arrival CRM for Hotel Front Desk Teams at IHG

The impact

Boosted guest satisfaction and loyalty program engagement. Reduced check-in friction for top-tier members. Earned internal support to expand CRM integrations across more properties.

I led product ownership for enhancements to IHG’s Guest Arrival Report (GAR), the CRM tool front-desk teams used to personalize check-in experiences. The work surfaced loyalty signals - status, preferences, anniversary milestones, VIP flags - at the exact moment staff needed them, so a routine greeting could become a memorable one.

How we got there

Front-desk staff at IHG properties were doing a demanding job under constant time pressure. They rarely had visibility into a guest’s full loyalty history or stay preferences before the guest walked in. The GAR tool existed, but it wasn’t surfacing the right signals in a usable way. Staff couldn’t act on what they couldn’t see, and the loyalty program’s value was getting lost in the gap between data and service.

I worked across CRM, marketing, and operations teams to identify what information actually changed behavior at the front desk. Anniversaries. VIP tier status. Repeated stay preferences. Unresolved service requests. These weren’t complex insights - they just needed to be visible at the right time, without overwhelming a team already managing arrivals in real time.

We redesigned the report to prioritize high-signal moments and delivered daily email summaries for upcoming check-ins so staff could prepare before shifts, not scramble during them. I piloted the improvements in high-traffic hotels where the volume was highest and the stakes for getting it right were most visible. The feedback shaped every subsequent iteration.

What this built

• A tool that gave staff a reason to go above and beyond. The front-desk quote in this project isn’t a tagline - it’s what happened when loyalty data became actionable at the human level.
• Expanded internal appetite for CRM investment. The pilot results built the internal case for deeper integrations across more properties and data sources.
• A model for loyalty-driven service moments. The prioritization logic and delivery format established a pattern IHG could apply across other guest touchpoints.