Integration Update: Launch Day to Take Place on August 18

We are focused on leveraging the breadth of Marriott’s portfolio to encourage our 110M+ members to consolidate their stays at only our brands. By giving members the best program in hospitality, we believe this will drive brand loyalty and higher returns for you.

Creating consistency in our loyalty program benefits is a key part of delivering the best loyalty program in hospitality. Beginning on August 18, members can earn and redeem points across 6,500 hotels and 29 brands* under a single award chart and loyalty currency. Today we are announcing to members this launch date, and the following key next steps to prepare: 

To learn more about the loyalty program, visit members.marriott.com.

Effective July 15, 2018, new registration for members has ended for Delta Crossover Rewards, Emirates Your World Rewards, and China Eastern Explorer Rewards. Beginning on Launch Day, all hotels will participate in a new Rewarding Events Program and will use the “Group Posting Tool”, which will replace SPG Pro as the system for posting Rewarding Events points and miles.

*29 brands referenced under Loyalty and Channels is exclusive of Bulgari.

Hotels use EMPOWER: Guest Experiences (GXP) along with Mobile Guest Services to bring the loyalty mindset to life in day-to-day operations, activate member benefits, capture guest preferences, and enable the power of personalization. GXP empowers hotels to streamline work and increase their ability to use valuable data captured across multiple points in the customer journey to deliver a personalized guest experience. GXP provides many beneficial features to hotels, such as Mobile Requests and Chat, Peer-to-Peer Chat, and the option to leverage associate mobility and support future efficiencies.

For SPG hotels, GXP will replace StarGuest beginning on Launch Day. Both SPG and Marriott Rewards hotels, including hotels with FOSSE PMS who use GXP today for Mobile Requests and Chat, will begin using GXP to activate many of the new Loyalty benefits. 

In addition, Loyalty members will have access to a new SPG mobile app on the same platform as the existing Marriott Rewards and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards mobile apps, streamlining the customer experience across all three brands.

With this launch, all 29 brands will offer the same Mobile Guest Services experience under the Marriott platforms, driving member engagement and a more purpose-driven and intentional experience for guests.

On Launch Day, guests starting their search on Marriott.com, SPG.com, and their respective mobile applications, will see both Marriott Rewards and SPG hotels available for booking. The Ritz-Carlton properties will be available on SPG.com, Marriott.com, and RitzCarlton.com. Migrating SPG hotels on to the Marriott systems is an important step towards the end-state goal of retiring SPG channels, which will generate cost synergies in support of the Owner and Franchisee value proposition and advance our efforts to drive conversion via direct channels.

The new full-portfolio inventory will allow guests to search across the portfolio and will drive significant increased shopping visibility to hotels. With enhanced, best-in-class digital capabilities driven by distance-focused consumer search behavior, guests can search by destination, powered by GooglePlaces. Guests will also be able to use continuous scroll on mobile, map-based shopping, and enhanced filters, including brand, tiers, cities, distance, price, amenities, transportation, nearby attractions, and points of interest.

This launch of full-portfolio shopping also means the joining of SPG and Marriott Rewards hotels for owners, franchisees and associates booking Explore rates. Associates will have seamless access to all brands under one search engine as Explore Rates will be bookable for both SPG and Marriott Rewards hotels on Marriott.com and the mobile applications.

SPG hotels worldwide will receive a high-performing standard Hotel Websites (HWS) on Marriott International’s digital platform. Qualified SPG properties will receive an Elevated Hotel Website. Starwood’s Property Pages, Local Property Sites (LPS – hosted by Achiga, formerly WebCanada) and Property Pages Expanded (PPE), will be decommissioned.

Due to the extensive breadth and depth of content on Elevated Hotel Websites, a large portion (approx. 90%) will be delivered on Launch Day; however, the remaining sites (approx. 10%) will launch at the end of August. These properties will receive a high-performing Standard Hotel Website until their Elevated Websites are complete, and hotels affected by this adjusted rollout schedule will receive a communication with additional details.

Elevated Hotel Websites will launch first in English. Additional languages will be delivered 2-4 weeks after translations have been delivered and validated. To ensure we launch all Elevated HWS, the rollout of some Standard Hotel Websites modules (formerly called Incremental Property Pages) will be implemented after August 31.

Prior to launch, testing will be completed to ensure technology readiness. Hotels will also have completed preparation activities for this momentous integration milestone. In the event of any issues during the technical transition, a comprehensive support structure, continuity and communication plans have been developed to ensure we are prepared to support hotels and guests. This includes Command Centers, which will act in an oversight capacity to ensure activities are completed as planned, provide support 24-hours a day to address urgent issues, and support any necessary communications during the process. To complete migration activities and reduce the impact on guests’ booking experience, Marriott direct channels may have outages during Launch Day; however, reservations can still be made by calling the property directly during this timeframe as MARSHA/Valhalla and PMS will still be available. In addition, during outages, there will not be an impact to hotel availability on the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) (e.g., Amadeus, Sabre, etc.).

With Launch Day approaching, we ask that all management companies ensure their hotels are successfully completing all applicable tasks and milestones. Specifically, it is critical that all hotel associates have selected their function in the Digital Learning Platform and complete all assigned training, as this will prepare hotel associates to deliver on the enhanced loyalty benefits taking effect on Launch Day. For more information about these changes, management companies are encouraged to join the July 27 Management Company webinar.

We also want to ensure SPG hotels and franchise management companies are informed of the impact of the changes on reporting and analytics, which we know play an important part in day-to-day operations and business planning. As of September 15, the first month’s loyalty reports based on the new loyalty program will be available via Marriott Reservations Data Warehouse (MRDW) reporting portal. When analyzing the new loyalty reports, you will notice several impacts including new reimbursement rates, changes to the penetration numbers as these are dependent on reservation data, and the inability to complete year to date analysis on status levels and enrollments given the program changes.

You will also notice several impacts to digital reports, which can be accessed via the MRDW reporting portal following Reservations Platform cutover. Although web and app data captured by MI and SPG systems will be accurate, the ability to draw conclusions and explain customer behavior will be limited. During the period between Launch Day and the completion of the Reservations Platform cutovers, it will be impossible to calculate a true digital conversion rate as bookings for SPG properties that have not gone through Reservations Platform integration will not appear in the digital reports.

A webinar will be held in August to provide an opportunity for owners and franchisees to learn more about these impacts and what’s changing, as well as how to gain access. Details, including the date and registration information, will be shared via the mi360 RUNDOWN.