January Monthly Recap | Former Starwood-Branded Hotels
Franchise Management Companies | As communicated last month, moving forward, we will be providing a monthly recap of the key changes shared with – and tasks asked of – hotels. We appreciate your support in ensuring your hotels remain informed and engaged throughout this process.
SUMMARY OF THIS MONTH’S ACTIVITIES:
GMs and Change Champions at former Starwood-branded hotels continue to receive weekly emails and have the opportunity to participate in weekly Check-In calls, which are held each Tuesday.
SUMMARY OF THIS MONTH’S KEY MESSAGES:
- guestVoice Launched on January 10, 2017 | guestVoice launched to hotels earlier this month. Since launch, more than 95% of properties have logged into the system and surveys are now being sent and guests are responding. In preparation for this launch, hotels were asked to ensure all impacted associates are trained and that the General Manager Project Certification task in Land-It had been marked complete. To date, 81% of hotels have at least one associate who has completed this training, and we appreciate your support in ensuring all impacting associates complete the training now that the system is live.
- Interim Brand Standards Process | All Starwood brand standards will be consolidated and migrated to Marriott’s global standards database on MGS in June 2017, at which point StarQA will be retired. In the interim, communications on standards will be sent through the change champion channels. Updates to brand standards will be delayed until the launch of the new standards database, with exceptions only being made for mission-critical updates, such as the flag display standard and the global food safety standard, that could have significant financial implications or impact guest safety. These updates will be housed on the temporary brand standard repository on The Platform.
- Avendra Conversion | As of Dec. 31, 2016, Starwood Centralized Procurement Service, or CPS, has been decommissioned in the Americas. Franchised properties who have signed up for Avendra should contact Avendra customer service at customerservice@avendra.com for any procurement-related support or questions. Franchised properties interested in signing up for Avendra’s services can visit www.avendra.com for more information or contact william.jeffreys@avendra.com directly.
- New Source for Operations & Brand Standards Questions | Please be aware that the HOT Help Mailbox has been retired. Have a brand or product specification question? Hotels are encouraged to email Ask.Ops@marriott.com and include a note indicating the brand and product. Have a question on another topic and not sure where to go? Email change.champions@marriott.com.
- Owner & Franchise Services Account Management Webinars | Webinars are being held this month for for GMs and franchise management companies. During these calls, we describe our franchise account management strategy and how we interact with franchise management companies. For on-property leaders joining the calls, we also provide an overview of the tools and resources available within the Marriott organization.
- U.S.
- Full Service (Le Méridien, Sheraton Hotels, The Luxury Collection, Tribute Portfolio & Westin Hotels) | This webinar was held on Monday, January 9 at 3:00 p.m. ET. If you were unable to join, you can access the presentation deck and recording (.mp4 | .wmv).
- Marriott Select Brands (Aloft, Element & Four Points) | This webinar will be held on Friday, January 27 at 1:30 p.m. ET. Please click here to register for the webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with the webinar link and a calendar invite. We strongly suggest you add this event to your calendar. Note: GMs were notified of this webinar via the January 16 ‘Week Ahead’ email.
- Canada (All Brands) | This webinar was held on Wednesday, January 18 at 4:00 p.m. ET. If you were unable to join, you can access the presentation deck and recording.
- U.S.