Zermatt Matterhorn
Salesforce Customer since 2018
200+
businesses connected to the Zermatt platform
Swiss region Zermatt Matterhorn visitors’ experiences hit new, connected heights
Millions visit Zermatt, a Swiss mountain resort, every year to ski, hike and immerse themselves in the natural splendor of the Alps. Its principal town, Zermatt, sits in the shadow of the Matterhorn – said to be world’s most photographed mountain peak – and attracts more tourists than any other Swiss town. It is a place of superlatives.
Here’s another: Zermatt Matterhorn is perhaps the world’s most digitally advanced tourist destination. As visitors disconnect from the stresses of modern life on the region’s slopes and in its world-class hotels and restaurants, they remain connected to a huge web of services and facilities. “Our goal is to guarantee the best possible experience for each individual guest,” said Andreas Mazzone, CEO of Bonfire, the company set up in 2017 to digitalise Zermatt’s tourism infrastructure.
“We aim to provide an experience and connection that’s as strong in the mountains as it is in the city centre. We collect and analyse data from every interaction on our website and the Matterhorn app to provide tailor-made communications that provide the right products and services at the right times to the right people. We are delivering added value to the region’s tourist industry and better experiences and improved convenience for guests. Salesforce is at the very core of this.”
Salesforce marries marketing with service to deliver unique and unforgettable guest experiences.
At the heart of the Zermatt Matterhorn’s ethos is the understanding that tourism is powered by people. The best operators understand their guests’ needs and can anticipate what services and experiences they should offer to make every stay unforgettable. Now, Zermatt Matterhorn’s hoteliers, restaurateurs, ski instructors and other operators can access the information they need to do just that.
“When we began, we realised that without digitalisation we would be lost,” recalled Mazzone. “At that time, one study comparing levels of digitalisation in different industries had found that tourism was the third least digitalised industry after construction and agriculture. If Zermatt Matterhorn was to get fit for future generations and remain competitive against other destinations and industries, we knew digitalisation was absolutely key.”
That’s where Salesforce came in. “We understood that tourism is a ‘people business’ and we had to build the customer journey from the guest’s perspective,” said Mazzone. “If you email us or engage with us on Facebook Messenger, it all feeds into Service Cloud. Marketing Cloud allows us to send out personalised communications giving information about the destination. Salesforce allows us to perfectly marry service with marketing.”
“Zermatt Matterhorn connects visitors and adds value to tourism with Salesforce”
Hosts understand their guests before they arrive, thanks to Service Cloud profiling.
Of course, the first step of the customer journey Mazzone describes is usually on social media. Once a potential visitor has made first contact via Facebook or Instagram, Zermatt Matterhorn uses Service Cloud’s digital engagement tool to connect to their social interactions and begin building a profile of them. This allows the nearly 80 resorts currently signed up to Bonfire (nearly half the region’s hotels and counting…) to understand their guests’ needs from day one and tailor their visit accordingly.
The profile is developed further on Matterhorn app, which allows visitors to build their trip by filtering interests by a wide range of criteria (hotels, apartments, daily-guest, local, skier, culinary, events and animation etc.)) and selecting activities and restaurants according to their own tastes. This information feeds back into Service Cloudto allow offers to be tailored, as well as being used to personalize emails sent through Marketing Cloud.
Ultimately, this rich data gives hoteliers a clearer understanding of who their guests are before they’ve even set foot in Zermatt. “We are going deep into the data so that we can know each individual guest’s needs and interests,” said Mazzone. “We are able to link all the data we have in one global ID in Service Cloud. If someone uses the Matterhorn app to buy a ski ticket or book accommodation on the zermatt.ch website, we see it and we can present them with offers that are tailored to them.”
Service Cloud gives the Zermatt-Matterhorn destination more time and better insight to provide the personal touch.
Time-consuming manual processes such as collecting guests’ personal details on arrival have been automated through Service Cloud, allowing guests to pre check-in via an online form in a similar way to how they would before a flight. This gives hosts more time to help their guests feel at home from the moment they arrive and deliver that personalised experience. In short, they are given greater freedom to get on with doing what they do best: providing hospitality.
“When you arrive you can get on with enjoying your stay,” explained Mazzone. “This means the people on reception have more time to show the guests the hotel and its facilities and pour them a welcome drink. It elevates the whole experience. It saves time and therefore money and it adds value to the business.”
Communicating this to Zermatt Matterhorn’s 120 hoteliers, 138 restaurants and other hospitality businesses is a key part of Mazzone’s job. “The main challenge I have is convincing stakeholders about the benefits of digitalisation,” he said. “We started with a mobile-first approach with the app, which connects to Salesforce via MuleSoft, because it was easier to convince guests of the benefits of having information such as which slopes are open, the weather forecast and offers from local businesses.”
Independent businesses punch above their weight with Marketing Cloud.
Stakeholders are signing up at a growing rate as the benefits become clear. “If you’re a single, independent hotelier or apartment owner you might not have the know-how or the resources to make your marketing communications as effective as you would like them to be,” explained Mazzone. “But by tapping into the data we have at our fingertips we can help them punch above their weight. For example, they can communicate with guests through tailored pre-visit emails through Marketing Cloud.”
It’s not just hoteliers. As guests enjoy their stay both on- and off-piste, businesses can benefit from offering visitors tailored promotions through the Matterhorn app. The benefits go further still. By integrating Tableau into the system, Zermatt Matterhorn is allowing its business operators to tap into big data in real time to inform the make-or-break decisions that the Covid-19 pandemic has required.
Tableau puts more reliable information on the table in real time.
“For example, during the pandemic, each hotel can see how many people will be in Zermatt over Easter – based on that they can decide whether they should open or not,” explained Mazzone. “As a tourist destination, especially during the time of Covid-19, this has been invaluable because it has allowed us to analyse in real time the demographics of the people who are staying in Zermatt Matterhorn.”
Tableau is informing the day-to-day running of Zermatt and the resourcing of local amenities. “We can tap into data such as how much snow is forecast or how many people will arrive in Zermatt and allocate resources such as clearing parking lots of snow accordingly,” said Mazzone. It’s even helping to inform the national response to Covid-19. “We had calls from the government after the UK virus mutation asking how many people were here from the UK. Tableau gives everyone more reliable information to assist the decision making process.”
Introducing the world’s first town to run on Salesforce.
The rollout of Service Cloud and its integration with Marketing Cloud were facilitated by implementation partner Persistent. But this was just the first part of Zermatt’s Salesforce journey. “We are creating an entire community that runs on Salesforce,” said Mazzone. “We are working with another partner, Astound Commerce, to implement Commerce Cloud. This requires close collaboration with us and Persistent. It’s really important that each partner understands the big picture of what we want to achieve.”
The application of Commerce Cloud represents the next step towards Zermatt’s bold ambition of becoming the world’s first town to run on Salesforce. It will link all the points at which visitors can access the internet – whether that’s through public WiFi on the slopes or access provided by hotels, restaurants and other businesses throughout the region – to create a holistic, connected and more rewarding experience for visitors and a seamless, more profitable marketplace for the region’s operators.
“Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud are planned to be connected to each other,” explained Mazzone. “So every product we sell throughout Zermatt Matterhorn – the accommodation, the ski ticket, instruction, travel from Zurich, whatever – can be booked through marketplace and we can build much deeper understanding and closer relationships with the data we’re gathering. That’s how we’re creating better visitor experiences and ensuring Zermatt Matterhorn is fit for the future.”
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