Brands’ finest hour?
The economic crisis hit some hotels harder than others, but it was the independents, generally speaking, that received the brunt of the storm as brands used the shelter of powerful marketing and booking tools.
“Brands are more powerful than ever, absolutely,” asserts Linnartz.
“Brands do better in a downturn. Whether it’s distribution, reaching existing customers, the Marriott rewards programme, online distribution, our owners can plug into that,” Dabbah adds.
Furthermore, properties benefit from the cross-selling capabilities of the Marriott sales force, service centre and online booking tools.
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“This is the power of working with a company like Marriott. The sales associates can present the customer with a solution,” he says.
“Customers want to be sure that whatever channel they choose to book through they are guaranteed to get the best rate,” Dabbah explains.
“That’s something Marriott does a great job of; we have a transparency across all of our channels, whether you are going direct to the hotel, the website or the intermediary.”
Ultimately, the aim is for Marriott to provide a property for every type of guest in every location they need.
This is going to require a great deal of work and effort, but as Linnartz says, “Marriott is a growth company”.
“There are a lot of exciting years ahead of us in opening new hotels, continuing to improve performance and I think it’s an exciting journey ahead of us as a company,” she adds.
It’s comforting to know for customers of Marriott that this ‘journey’ is based on the question “what would Bill do?”.
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