Skift Take
Arne Sorenson certainly had a lot to share at this year's Skift Global Forum. Read on for some insight into the company's unconventional decision to link Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest, as well as how he really feels about Airbnb and direct bookings.
Last Friday, when Marriott International finally announced it had closed its $13 billion acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the bigger news wasn't necessarily about the creation of the world's new largest hotel operator.
Instead, it was the fact that the Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) programs were now linked, enabling status matching and points transfers.
So when Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson walked onto the stage at the Skift Global Forum in Manhattan on Tuesday, fresh off a merger-related media blitz, it was one of the first topics to be discussed.
"We decided [to link the programs] in January basically," Sorenson told Rafat Ali, Skift founder and CEO, going against the advice of numerous consultants who advised Marriott to "not do more than you have to do at closing because there's so much that can go wrong."
"Notwithstanding that, we thought we needed to deliver something immediately to our customers," he said. "SPG members, particularly, were asking, 'What will happen to our program?'"
Later, Sorenson noted, "For us to have momentum out of the gates, we needed to deliver immediate benefits. What do we do for guests? We looked at what the airlines have done. None of the airlines have linked accounts on close."
Bringing up airlines as an example of what major travel companies do when it comes to mergers and acquisitions was a notable example: After U.S. Airways and American Airlines closed on their merger in December 2013, it took at least five months for them to link their respective loyalty programs. And just hours before Sorenson appeared on the stage, loyalty experts Brian Kelly of The Points Guy and George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog debated the value of airline loyalty programs, a
