Operation strategy

Web Analytics Briefing

Marriott International--- Design and User Experience

Based on the category of design and user experience, I found the article called “How to Earn Marriott Points Through Their New Social Campaign” from Forbes, written by Johnny Jet, on Aug. 10th, 2017. This article talks about Marriott’s new strategic advertising approach to connect their customers with its brands and associates, which represents Marriott’s entry into category marketing and shows people how it would improve its abilities to present a more powerful offering to the consumers.

Marriott is a global hospitality company which operates and franchises hotels and lodging facilities. It has more than 4,200 properties in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Caribbean, and Asia Pacific. With its core values--- put people first, pursue excellence, embrace change, act with integrity and serve world, Marriott has made itself a popular choice among its big customer base. For its target audience, Marriott has successfully built up its different target market within its industry by specifically targeting the needs for their customers - focusing on multiple market segments, and with its diverse portfolio of eighteen brands.

For this “Golden Rule” campaign, Marriott wants to create "warmth, familiarity and the genuine human connections" between guests and hotel employees, which features four of Marriott International’s brands — Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Four Points by Sheraton and SpringHill Suites. This is the first time when these four different brands work together, and the connection between the four brands is just the service that rooted in human connections. This campaign would appear on different places with different design styles, including cinema, broadcast, in-flight and mobile. Although the campaign is now only launched in the U.S., it would also expand to Canada in the next month. It will also launch the digital-only content element with stories about real Marriott employees and guests shared on a dedicated campaign landing page and social media platforms. Marriott wants to use this campaign to enable the company to put more resources together, to deliver a higher quality content and design to meet users’ high expectations.

By connecting with Marriott, people can now earn up to 45,000 points per year. Using Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts to Marriott Rewards accounts for 750 points; follow Marriott Rewards on Twitter and Instagram for 250 points; watch for three to four point earning social campaigns per month, all of which are related to its website design and user experience on social media platforms. As we all know, user experience has grown from a static interaction between device and user to a robust conversation among them. Marriot related websites all have clear and understandable contents that can help the audience receive a satisfactory impression in booking and browsing. Marriott does well in its inbound marketing content – it uses different platforms to attract both of their existing and potential customers to its campaign website, using remarkable content and valuable information to get engaged with them. After these customers receive the information, Marriott starts to help convert them into leads and then close them. All the things Marriott has done are aimed at delighting their customers and making them satisfied, since Marriott International clearly knows that customer satisfaction is directly related to its managers’ ability to motivate their frontline customer care associates. If I were a part of their employees, I do agree with the tools and strategies they had taken in the stage.

User experience is quite important, while design is perceptual to the users, and Marriott does well in bridging these two essential items and allows easy communication with their customers. At the same time, customer experience platforms aren't sufficient, and both qualitative and quantitative analysis identifies key engagement drivers. Marriott wants to design the campaign that can present customers with clear and relevant information in the best possible way. During and after the campaign, using analytics to predict and analyze customer actions are also important. The company would easily find out how many people get engaged with this campaign through their social media accounts, how many potential customers there would be by collecting the newly registered accounts earning points, which are the best channels to reach customers by collecting different number of viewers from ads on different platforms, and so on. It is easy to define whether it would be a successful campaign or not, whether this campaign would call for enough attention and get people engaged actively or not.

From all above, if success, I think Marriott should try to keep converting these newly registered customers into loyalty members by sending direct emails or offering special rewards, as well as keeping social media working a good platform to communicate with the customers. All in all, try to find new opportunities and seize the chance from it, since hotels are nowadays more and more closely related to big data and digital world!

Article Resource:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnyjet/2017/08/10/how-to-earn-marriott-points-through-their-new-social-campaign/#7cfe7feaf994

References:

http://marketrealist.com/2014/10/must-know-what-drives-marriotts-segment-revenue/

http://kellykuang21.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-marriott-international-target-their.html

https://brightkite.com/essay-on/marriott-s-market-segmentation-and-market-research

http://www.marketingdive.com/news/marriott-launches-category-marketing-strategy-with-golden-rule-campaign/449319/

http://www.marriott.com/Multimedia/PDF/CorporateResponsibility/2015_Reports/2015_Climate_Change_Response_final.pdf

https://contently.com/strategist/2015/12/15/metrics-meet-magic-marriott-cmo-karin-timpone-reaches-next-gen-travelers-incredible-content/

http://blog.snapshot.travel/how-to-choose-analytics-and-data-visualization-tools-for-a-hotel

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