November 19, 2015 Owner & Franchise Communications

Announcing Pre-Arrival Room Upsell

Marriott International is in the midst of a multi-year, multi-phased journey to transform its reservations technology and deliver a new, more compelling customer experience. The Enhanced Reservation Solution (ERS) program improves the way room inventory is sold to drive revenue, conversion and customer satisfaction. ERS will enable hotels to offer more room products, services, choice and personalization during the reservation sales experience. As part of the ERS program, One Yield Inventory Optimization was launched earlier this year to simplify the process of managing inventory and to optimize the inventory that is available for our customers to purchase.

Pre-Arrival Room Upsell is the next big deliverable of ERS, and will leverage the technology in One Yield Inventory Optimization to offer customers an upsell to the “next best room” when booking on Marriott Direct channels. The initial launch will be applicable to retail rates booked on Marriott.com and will be offered through the pre-arrival email, with the goal of expanding to additional channels and rate types in 2016, as appropriate. This will deliver immediate benefits to hotels that are using Inventory Optimization in One Yield. No additional action is required to activate this enhancement. However, hotels that are using Inventory Optimization in One Yield must ensure their room hierarchy is set up appropriately to maximize the benefits of Pre-Arrival Room Upsell. Initial details and steps to prepare were shared with hotels via the Oct. 19 Weekly Update.

As we prepare to launch this new program, we also wanted to share with you some details of the Pre-Arrival Room Upsell offering.

Upsell to next best room will be offered on Marriott.com and through the pre-arrival email
- Will initially apply only to Premium / Standard / Weekend retail rates (10, 12, 20 market segments); future plans will include expanding to other segments as appropriate
Launch: Dec. 10, 2015 to approximately 3,750 One Yield enabled hotels
2016: Expand offer to other rates and luxury brands (The Ritz-Carlton, The Ritz-Carlton Club, EDITION, MVW, and Bvlgari will participate after initial launch)
Note: This enhancement will leverage existing room descriptions and room photos corresponding to room pools in the hotel’s room hierarchy within One Yield; hotels should continue to improve room descriptions and photos on Marriott.com in order to maximize performance

Thank you for your support as we continue to modernize our reservations platform to deliver the shopping and booking experiences customers demand. Additional details regarding Pre-Arrival Room Upsell will be communicated via the Nov. 30 Weekly Update. For more information, visit the Pre-Arrival Room Upsell page on MGS.

We look forward to providing updates on future ERS enhancements in Q1 2016.