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Meetings Outperform at Marriott
It comes as no surprise that Marriott International’s 8,500-plus properties and, at last count, 32 brands across traditional and extended stay hotels would deliver the top rating on “strategic locations to meet business needs” among BTN’s corporate travel manager audience. Indeed, at 5.48 on a six-point scale, this was the highest individual rating captured by any hotel across all survey criteria.
“We wake up every day feeling so grateful that we have this portfolio of brands to sell,” said Marriott SVP global sales Tammy Routh. “We are able to go to our customers with every price point and every trip purpose—and have choices available pretty much everywhere.”
That bounty requires informed, consultative selling for the Marriott team.
“You can’t throw that [portfolio] at a customer and say, ‘Hey, pick what you need,’” Routh acknowledged. “The sole job of our global sales teams is to know the customer so intimately that [sales] takes that portfolio and … [makes] it very customized for them.”
Marriott in the past 18 months, has incorporated more outsourced resources to support sales needs like data entry and, on the meetings side, has shifted to a specialized team the catering-only business that has grown considerably but doesn’t necessarily need deeper product expertise Marriott dedicates to corporate clients.
“Outsourcing strategies and being able to specialize certain business with other teams has helped us prioritize the most important opportunities,” said Routh.
Among those most critical opportunities for Marriott has been meetings and events, about which Marriott president and CEO Anthony Capuano in the company’s most recent earnings call said “revenue was pacing up 14 percent for next year, year over year.”
“We are not successful without really strong meetings and events, and also business travel,” said Routh, despite the surge in leisure travel. “Most of our hotels aren’t built to be filled only with leisure business; because of that, it’s never going to displace our special corporate and group.”
BTN’s Hotel Survey respondents rated Marriott highest for supporting corporate meetings and events. The company has put a lot of focus here, said Routh, ensuring training for the meetings and events teams is always robust, delivering attention to rising calls for turnkey sustainability options for the larger events business and also working on ways to reward meeting planners with Bonvoy loyalty benefits.
Marriott has also innovated around serving smaller events, which have become a bigger piece of the business and are coming through with shorter and shorter lead times.
“Smaller meetings are something that we are trying to solve for on behalf of our own company and on behalf of customers,” she said. “We are one of the hotel companies invested in Group 360’s Group Sync,” which is an instant-book meetings solution that a number of major hotel groups have supported. To date, Marriott is among the only brands that has integrated “at scale” with the platform, counting 1,500 properties on the tool as of January. “If we can get something like that with momentum, it changes everything. Automation in that space takes a huge amount of work off everyone’s plate.”
Like Hyatt’s Vonderheide, Routh has seen an increase in companies merging meetings volume with business travel as they come to the negotiating table for 2024, and that is playing to Marriott’s brand and portfolio strength. As a sales team looking for holistic partnerships, having visibility into meetings spend—both large and small gatherings—can make a meaningful difference.
“There will be some hotels that, when the team knows there’s meetings and events that could be held at their hotel, it will change their whole opinion on offering a business travel rate,” said Routh.
Routh acknowledged Marriott’s position as “rate leader.” The brand received its lowest scores from corporate travel managers on the partnership approach to corporate business criteria, which specifically asks respondents to consider the supplier’s rate flexibility.
“We want to make sure the rate is highly valued in terms of value for price paid,” Routh said, and valued on the part of the hotel owner or franchisee as well. “If we are the rate leader, we will then be the ones owners and franchisees come to first and want to do business with. That is good for our customers and goes back to [having locations and choice] everywhere they need to be.”
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