- Guests should have a more “emotional” connection with Bonvoy; that’s typically a polite way to tell people not to expect a lot
- With Marriott now being the world’s largest hotel brand, the company has the freedom to tip the scales more towards owners rather than guests
- Many big decisions are unsolvable, as he needs to consider guests, associates, owners, and Marriott shareholders, to find the right balance
Marriott guests have short memory
Capuano was asked about general Marriott brand standards, as many hotel guests are once again expecting pre-coronavirus service levels, but aren’t finding that to be the reality. It’s pretty clear that for many hotel groups, service will never return to pre-coronavirus levels — the cuts that were made in the name of safety will stick around to save costs.
Here’s what Capuano has to say about Marriott’s brand standards, and hotels reinstating services:
“I just spent two days with my leadership team talking through a bunch of these issues. I’ve described this phenomenon as the friction that exists between the short memory of our guests and the long memory of our owners. And because of our short memories, you want everything to be the way it was. You want the restaurant open the hours that it was open before. You want the spa open with all the treatment rooms and all the technicians available. You want full service at the pool. You want daily housekeeping. You want all those things. And, in a way, that’s good because it means our consumers are anxious to get back. At the other end of the spectrum, our owners and franchisees have borne a disproportionate weight, from the impact of the pandemic. They’ve lost billions of dollars of revenue. Suggestions about getting back to ‘normal,’ they look at you like you have three heads and they say, ‘You’ve got to be more sensitive to the steep climb we have in front of us.’”
It seems that the hotel industry’s strategy is to essentially collude on cutting services in order to lower guest expectations. If all hotels equally cut services, then the industry on the whole can increase margins, assuming people don’t have great alternatives.
Bottom line
Marriott’s new CEO seems pretty content with the status quo when it comes to Marriott Bonvoy and lackluster brand standards.
He believes that Marriott Bonvoy is “owner-friendly,” while Starwood Preferred Guest was more “guest-friendly,” and he’s happy with how that balance has changed. Furthermore, he thinks that guests have short memory, and should be forgiving of hotels offering lackluster service for a long time to come, as they make up for losses due to the pandemic.
