Condé Nast and Deloitte Digital have teamed up to present Digital Acceleration in the Time of COVID, a nine-part series of stories from global business leaders who've charted a path through uncertainty.
Here, Marriott’s Peggy Roe shares how the hotelier reversed a pandemic-driven, all-time low of 14 percent occupancy by consulting with its most trusted travel advisors: customers.
When the first COVID-19 headlines started to appear, Peggy Roe was home in Hong Kong. She’d recently been named Global Officer, Customer Experience, Loyalty & New Ventures for Marriott, and was set to move her family to their new home near the company’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. The move wasn’t slated until later in the year, but she was scheduled for a board presentation at HQ in the coming days. And the news was sounding ominous.
The last significant novel coronavirus outbreak (aka SARS) started in Hong Kong in 2003— something many Hong Kongers still remembered—while the source of the current outbreak, Wuhan, was just a few hours north of the city by plane. It was Chinese New Year, and Roe’s 10- and 12-year-old children were on holiday; out of an abundance of caution, she decided to bring the whole family with her to the US. They packed a little extra, just in case—enough to last them two weeks.
Three months later, she was still in the U.S. With the pandemic seemingly out of control, the world was awash in uncertainty, and Roe really needed to get her family back home. With 16 years at Marriott, she was no stranger to travel; but before she asked her family to suit up with masks and gloves and take the risk of air travel, she needed to feel confident about what they could expect from flights, layovers and post-landing COVID testing and quarantine procedures. But it was impossible to find answers to the simplest questions.
Peggy Roe
Global Officer, Customer Experience, Loyalty & New Ventures
The lack of clear, consistent information along with the lack of confidence from travel and airport officials caused her and her husband to debate the trip for almost 10 days. Her only line to potentially accurate information during this time: a local Hong Kong Facebook group of other travelers who’d made the same trip. Finally, the family took a leap of faith.
Thirty-six hours of travel, 12 hours of testing and a 2-week home quarantine later Roe and family were safe at home and reengaged with life in Hong Kong. But though the grueling travel odyssey was behind her, the hard-won insights Roe had gained in the process would help shape Marriott’s response for customers in the days and months to come.
Making Guests Feel Comfortable and Safe
The effect of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry was worse than the September 11 attacks and the Great Recession combined. In April 2020, Marriott and the rest of the industry hit an all-time low of roughly 14 percent occupancy; at one point 2,000 of Marriott’s 7,500 hotels across the globe were closed. Despite the shocks, Roe and team knew they couldn’t stand still. They’d need to coordinate communications and support for guests whose travel plans had been disrupted, fundamentally redesign and deploy new health and safety processes for all properties, and train associates on new cleanliness and sanitation protocols. Each action would need to be tailored to each of the company’s markets, and all of it would need to happen in a matter of weeks.
It was a call to action.
“When times of crisis hit, the best people to be around are hotel operators—people who just inherently know what to do and whip into action,” Roe says. Everyone at Marriott—whether at a property, in a market, or at corporate headquarters—went into that mode. “It was like our DNA had clicked in.”
At the outset, Marriott’s Customer Insights and Analytics teams were tasked with collecting data from around the world to investigate a crucial question: what would it take to make guests feel comfortable and safe in their hotels? Roe and a colleague built a framework and plan for forging ahead: Do good, build confidence, inspire travel, and drive recovery.
They didn’t wait for data to start making changes. Safety was an obvious concern; it would be the first phase of the new mission. To that end Marriott focused resources on accelerating its Contactless Services—app-driven processes with features like streamlined check-in and mobile room keys. They also established a Global Cleanliness Council of both internal and external experts to develop safety and sanitation best practices.
As the research data came in, Roe and team were surprised to learn that though safety and cleanliness mattered to their customers, there was an even bigger challenge. More than anything, before even considering travel people needed to know: What experience can we expect when we get there? As Roe had herself experienced, the basics of travel were no longer a given and the biggest complaints were about very simple things—like whether there would be food available.
“We were working on solving the complexity of making the arrival process contactless,” Roe recalls. “But the very simple pain point was about information.”
In response, Marriott’s teams first created simple ‘What to Expect’ webpages that each property could customize with details on what was open, closed or modified due to COVID-19. Then they turned their full attention to more nuanced customer listening. Roe and team created a new community: Marriott Bonvoy POV (Point of View), a diverse focus group of roughly 2,500 loyalty members and non-members that Marriott could tap for real-time insights—anytime. They also leveraged their long-standing Marriott Insiders Community, an open forum where members share knowledge and perspectives with each other. During the pandemic, the Insiders Community grew to 15,000 members.
Both platforms have contributed in outsized ways to Marriott’s customer intelligence since the pandemic. With so much changing week to week, these platforms have become a normalized part of how the company gets directional feedback on important decisions and initiatives. While the platform was set up to request feedback on key questions asked of the community, Roe found that members of Marriott Bonvoy POV didn’t just want to provide feedback; they were eager—very eager even—to share new ideas of their own. Roe sees this as an important input to Marriott’s future innovations.
Reshaping the Hospitality Industry
All of this has changed the way Marriott looks at things. In a world with less predictable or forecastable performance indicators, the company relies on a new data mix: internal and external leading indicators combined with gut-instinct reflections culled from global, bi-weekly meetings. A redoubled focus on customer feedback has inspired new solutions like the Work Anywhere concept: guests can choose from a Day Pass (people looking for a place to work locally can check in and out anytime between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.), a Stay Pass (a workspace with an overnight stay and extended check in and check out times), or a Play Pass (tailored packages that combine a place to work with a leisure getaway at any one of 68 luxury hotels and resorts).
This increasingly real-time model of thinking is designed for the new future of travel. Roe knows that consumers and companies will make different choices about their budgets and itineraries even after the pandemic, and that these choices will reshape the hospitality industry. Marriott has been wasting no time in keeping their most cherished guests engaged and can’t wait to welcome Marriott Bonvoy members back to the world of travel – a world reimagined for a post-pandemic era. With help from collaborators like Deloitte Digital, the new Marriott Bonvoy App showcases more options for leisure and local travel.
“We do believe—and we’ve always believed—that travel will be back,” Roe says. But in what form, and who will be traveling at what frequency and for what purpose may change. “That’s why we’re testing, trying, and listening to consumers to see where things might take us in the future.”
For Roe, the entire undertaking rests on one very human, if intangible thing: empathy. A need for empathy has been the unifying thread from her own experiences traveling during the pandemic to the insights gathered from customers and through to Marriott’s core values.
“The values of our company are about humility, empathy, transparency, and taking care of our associates so they’ll take care of our guests,” Roe says. In crisis, she saw the company live those values in the ways they handled even the toughest decisions—much the same way it always has.
If the past year has been chaotic and uncertain, Roe points out that “it’s the way people treated each other that has been most consistent. The company is full of people who care about each other and about delivering great experiences for our guests.”
A lot may have changed in the past year but, says Roe, “That part hasn’t changed a bit.”
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