Skift Take
At the core of Marriott's massive growth and marketing push is an attempt to evolve its hotel product to match guests' evolving expectations and not get left behind.
Editor’s Note: Skift is running a series of interviews with hospitality CEOs talking about the Future of the Guest Experience and the evolving expectations and demands of hotel guests. Check out all the interviews as they come out here. This continues our series of CEO interviews, the previous series was on the Future of Booking, with online travel CEOs.
Marriott International is the midst of a rejuvenation and CEO Arne Sorenson is leading more than 4,000 hotels through the process. He appears often on major news shows, talks up innovation with his staff behind closed doors, and is betting the future of the corporation on meeting millennials’, and all travelers’, expectations for more personalized, technologically advanced service.
Marriott recently announced the launch of an in-house creative and content marketing studio, is pushing its Travel Brilliantly campaign for the Marriott brand harder than ever, and is investing in the lifestyle market with its newest Moxy property.
With so many brands and properties across the globe, it would seem difficult to keep track on what needs to be done to meet the needs of so many different guests. Sorenson recently spoke with Skift about his insights on today’s guests and what needs to be done to remain a global leader.
An edited version of the interview is below:
Skift: What are the biggest challenges that you face today in improving the guest experience?
Arne Sorenson: That’s a big, broad question. We have 4,000 hotels in 80 countries and I think the answer to that question varies dramatically from place to place. I would say that the biggest single issue we’ve got is to make sure that we move the product along as far as we can so that it is current and compelling. We have some hotels that have been in our system for more than 20 years, some of which have been wonderfully reinvented and some still have to be wonderfully reinvented. We want to make sure that we get that done.
Skift: Is there a certain element of the guest experience that takes priority in improving over the others?
Sorenson: The biggest watchword for us is authenticity. We have, for generations, had a pronounced focus on our people and service culture. The most important element to that is a genuine welcome and the friendliness and attentiveness of service while they’re at the hotel. We want to make su
